At a pivotal moment for U.S. nuclear regulation, researchers from the University of Illinois Grainger College of Engineering and College of Law have published an article in the July 2026 issue of Nuclear News proposing an interdisciplinary framework for modernizing one of the foundational principles of radiation protection.
The article, “Don’t Scrap ALARA—Modernize It,” was co-led by Professor Zahra Mohaghegh of the Department of Nuclear, Plasma & Radiological Engineering and Professor Arden Rowell of the College of Law. The research combines expertise in nuclear engineering, risk assessment, and administrative law to address one of the most important regulatory questions currently facing the U.S. nuclear industry: how to modernize radiation protection while supporting both technological innovation and public safety.
Additional authors include George Joslin, a Ph.D. student, and Dr. Seyed Reihani, a senior research scientist, both affiliated with Mohaghegh’s Socio-Technical Risk Analysis (SoTeRiA) Research Laboratory.
The publication is part of a broader interdisciplinary research program that integrates nuclear engineering, law, and risk analysis to address emerging regulatory challenges that neither discipline can solve alone. By combining technical risk assessment with legal and policy analysis, the team develops decision-making frameworks that simultaneously enhance safety, improve regulatory efficiency, and strengthen the transparency and defensibility of regulatory decisions.
The research comes at a pivotal time for nuclear regulation in the United States. Recent legal and policy developments—including the ADVANCE Act, Executive Order 14300, and the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Trump v. Slaughter—have intensified national discussions about how federal agencies should balance efficient regulation with adequate protection while providing transparent and well-supported regulatory decisions, even as longstanding assumptions about regulatory independence continue to evolve.
The publication is also especially timely because the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) recently released a proposed rule that would remove the long-standing As Low As Reasonably Achievable (ALARA) principle from its radiation protection regulations while retaining existing dose limits and opening the proposal for public comment.
Rather than treating ALARA as something to preserve unchanged or eliminate entirely, the Illinois researchers propose modernizing it through two complementary reforms. First, they recommend implementing ALARA using a transparent, structured cost-benefit framework that identifies benefit-justified alternatives while selecting the lowest-radiation-exposure option among those alternatives. Second, they propose explicitly addressing uncertainty in radiation risk and the effectiveness of radiation protection measures using risk-informed methods already familiar within the NRC’s regulatory framework, including probabilistic risk assessment and human reliability analysis.
“The question is not whether ALARA should remain unchanged or disappear. The challenge is to modernize it into a transparent, risk-informed decision-making framework that explicitly integrates safety, regulatory efficiency, uncertainty, and societal benefits. Rather than scrapping ALARA, the NRC should modernize it to better support both adequate protection and efficient regulation,” the Illinois research team said.
The authors argue that recent legal developments have increased the importance of transparent and well-supported regulatory decision-making. Their proposed framework offers an approach for helping the NRC satisfy the ADVANCE Act’s dual statutory mandates of adequate protection and regulatory efficiency, while improving the transparency, consistency, and judicial defensibility of regulatory decisions.
This publication builds upon the Illinois team’s broader research on NRC regulatory modernization. Earlier this year, the researchers submitted interdisciplinary comments on the NRC’s proposed Part 57 rule for advanced reactor licensing, combining engineering analysis with legal scholarship to address emerging regulatory challenges. Together, these efforts demonstrate the University of Illinois’ leadership in developing interdisciplinary approaches that bridge engineering, law, and risk analysis to help modernize the nation’s nuclear regulatory framework.
The research was supported by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission through the project “Context-Based Analysis of a Risk-Informed, Performance-Based Regulatory Approach for Advanced Nuclear Reactors” (Grant No. 31310024M0018). The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the University of Illinois or the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.