When US President Trump signed an executive order in May 2025 seeking to streamline the adoption of nuclear energy by directing federal agencies to reconsider whether radiation protection standards have been unnecessarily strict, he reignited a debate that has smoldered in radiation science for decades. At the heart of the controversy is the linear nonthreshold (LNT) model—the idea that any amount of radiation, no matter how small, has damaging biological effects. Resolving whether LNT is a reasonable precaution or a costly misapplication of incomplete science will require not just better arguments, but better data.
Caffrey et al. (Thu,) studied this question.
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