A report just released by Idaho National Laboratory reviews decades of radiation protection standards and research on the health effects of low-dose radiation and recommends that the current U.S. annual occupational dose limit of 5,000 mrem be maintained without applying ALARA—the “as low as reasonably achievable” regulatory concept first introduced in 1971—below that threshold.

Noting that epidemiological studies “have consistently failed to demonstrate statistically significant health effects at doses below 10,000 mrem delivered at low dose rates,” the report also recommends “future consideration of increasing this limit to 10,000 mrem/year with appropriate cumulative-dose constraints.”

Funds earmarked for “integrated biological and computational low-dose radiation research” will go to 14 university research projects in a new approach to federally funded low-dose radiation research that leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to find cellular markers of radiation health effects. The Department of Energy announced on August 21 that these 14 projects on cellular and molecular responses to low-dose radiation would collectively get $19.5 million in funding over three years.