Wednesday, August 10, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Yucca radiation limits unveiled

Standards will be good for 1 million years, EPA says

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WASHINGTON -- The Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday unveiled a new set of radiation limits for Yucca Mountain that appear headed on a path to prolong and intensify clashes over the safety of burying nuclear waste in Nevada.

A top EPA official said the standards, rewritten to satisfy a federal court ruling, would offer health protection to Nevadans from buried canisters of decaying nuclear fuel for as long as 1 million years.

But the federal agency's plan was met with immediate and strong criticism from Nevada leaders and citizen advocates.

They charged the EPA limits are lax and will do more to ensure a nuclear waste repository is built at Yucca Mountain than they will protect the public from exposure to radioactive particles expected to escape into the environment over thousands of years.

If EPA officials fail to change the benchmarks after fielding public comments over the next 60 days, Attorney General Brian Sandoval said Nevada "will sue them again."

"Never in our wildest nightmares would we have anticipated such a ridiculous standard," Gov. Kenny Guinn said. "This is junk science at its worst."

The radiation health standard is a primary benchmark used to ensure that safety protections are designed into the nuclear waste tunnels the Department of Energy proposes to build 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

EPA proposed a unique two-part standard, with one set of limits for the first 10,000 years of repository operation and a second set for the succeeding years, out to a million years.

The repository's potential impacts are projected through the use of complex computer modeling. Still, scientists vary in their levels of confidence to determine what Nevada's climate, geology and its population will be like thousands of years into the future.

"It is clear this is an unprecedented standard. We've never tried to regulate for this period of time," said Kevin Crowley, director of the Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board of the National Academies of Science.

Jeffrey Holmstead, EPA assistant administrator for air and radiation, said the agency was attempting to set limits that will affect 25,000 generations.

"It's a real scientific challenge but we think we've done it in a way that is consistent with the best science," Holmstead said.

The Energy Department believes it can meet the proposed EPA standard, DOE spokesman Craig Stevens said. It was unclear what additional work DOE may need to perform to demonstrate compliance or what it might add to the project in terms of time or cost.

Yucca supporters said the proposed standards may finally give the Department of Energy some target to shoot for as its struggles to form a license application for the nuclear waste site.

The project has been delayed by several problems over the past year, most notably a federal court ruling last July 9 that threw out portions of the EPA's previous radiation standard.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled the EPA improperly limited its benchmark to 10,000 years. A National Academies of Science study ordered by Congress concluded in 1995 that long-lived radioactive particles could be escaping from Yucca Mountain at maximum dose levels for as long as 1 million years.

Holmstead maintained the revised limits should satisfy the judges.

"We're quite confident we've paid careful attention to what the court said," Holmstead said. "We are quite confident to the extent this is challenged it would be upheld."

Crowley, who was staff director of the panel that wrote the 1995 report, said it appeared "EPA has been very careful to link what they are doing to the recommendations in our previous report."

But Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said what EPA has proposed is "voodoo science and arbitrary numbers.

"I am astounded that the EPA actually put those recommendations on paper," Reid said.

Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., called the proposal "arbitrary and grossly misguided." Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., called it "irrational and misguided."

The EPA "is giving the finger to the court. It is almost as if they want it thrown out again," said Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects.

"The EPA can propose any number it wants, but the real trick will be proving this new standard can be met, and it remains to be proven that can be done," said Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev.

For the first 10,000 years of operation, the Energy Department would need to calculate that a hypothetical farmer living 11 miles south of the repository, around Amargosa Valley, would be exposed to radiation from repository operations of no more than 15 millirem of radiation annually.

Holmstead said for comparison a chest X-ray exposes a patient to 10 millirem while a mammogram results in a 30 millirem exposure.

The repository exposures would be calculated on top of what people receive in natural background radiation given off by rocks and soil, building materials and cosmic rays. The EPA estimated the background radiation at Amargosa Valley at 350 millirem, while it said the national average was 300 millirem.

For the period beyond 10,000 years, EPA proposed to set the repository limit at 350 millirem above natural background. There is no corresponding groundwater standard.

In getting to that number, the EPA searched for a western state that it said would be "fairly well populated" and similar in other respects to Nevada. It settled on Colorado as a point of reference.

According to the EPA, Colorado's estimated annual average background radiation level is 700 millirem. The agency set 350 millirem as its post 10,000 year limit by subtracting Amargosa Valley's background levels from those in Colorado.

In that way, Holmstead said, "even in a million years from now, a person living at the border of the nuclear repository would not be exposed to radiation at levels any higher than what people are routinely exposed to throughout the country today."

The EPA also directed the Energy Department to perform additional analyses over the million-year time frame to determine how earthquakes, volcanic activities, a rainier climate and corrosion processes would affect its compliance with the reworked limits.

Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said the EPA approach was too much of a stretch.

"I am appalled at the complete arrogance of the EPA in announcing these standards," he said. "The EPA has provided no scientific basis for the 350 millirem figure."

"The EPA now has the dubious distinction of proposing a standard that would be the worst in the Western world, by far," said environmental scientist Arjun Makhijani, president of Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. "No Western programs explicitly allow as large as 350 millirem per year at the time of peak dose."

Steve Frishman, a Nevada technical adviser, said the new rules also cut DOE a break by allowing it to use median values in calculating radiation doses, allowing it effectively to discard high measurements. EPA said the change ensures compliance is measured by "the most likely performance" of the repository.

In its 216-page proposed regulation, the EPA noted it considered a two-part radiation standard in 1999 but rejected it. But due to the federal court's decision last summer "it is necessary for us to re-evaluate potential approaches," the agency said.

Given the uncertainties far into the future, the EPA's approach is "scientifically defensible," said Rod McCullum, a senior project manager for the Nuclear Energy Institute.

At 350 millirem, "it still is a small level of radiation," McCullum said. "You don't get health effects until you get into the hundreds of thousands of millirem."

But Judy Treichel, director of the nonprofit Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force, pointed to a recent National Academies study that concluded radiation exposures of any level increase health risks.

"This doesn't protect public health. It protects DOE's ability to build the dump," Treichel said.