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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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INL makes a case for eliminating ALARA and setting higher dose limits
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.”
Youshi Zeng, Shengwei Wu, Wei Liu, Guanghua Wang, Nan Qian, Xiaoling Wu, Wenguan Liu, Yu Huang, Yuan Qian
Nuclear Technology | Volume 203 | Number 1 | July 2018 | Pages 48-57
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2018.1433408
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Thorium-Based Molten Salt Reactor (TMSR) has been highlighted for its safety, economy, and nuclear nonproliferation. A program for developing the TMSR system has been launched in Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. In the TMSR system, mixtures of LiF and BeF2, termed FLiBe, are proposed and used as the primary coolant salt, in which tritium is produced mainly by the neutron reactions of lithium. In the TMSR system, at high temperatures, tritium can permeate through metal walls to the surroundings, leading to a potential radiological hazard. Thus, tritium control becomes a major problem hindering the development of the TMSR system. Evaluation of the tritium distribution is necessary for tritium control in the TMSR system. In this study, the Tritium Transport Analysis Code (TTAC) has been developed for simulating the tritium behaviors in the TMSR system (hence, the code TMSR-TTAC), such as tritium chemical forms in coolant salts, tritium transport behaviors, and tritium distribution in the system. The model code is developed by the MATLAB/SIMULINK package, and it is based on the mass balance equations of the tritium-containing species and hydrogen. TMSR-TTAC is benchmarked with the molten salt reactor model, which is based on Molten Salt Reactor Experiment designs. The results show that TMSR-TTAC has the ability to calculate the tritium distribution in the TMSR system.