Thursday, August 11, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

YUCCA MOUNTAIN: EPA logic on radiation questioned

State official says 10 million cancer deaths would be acceptable under safety standard

Nevada's Nuclear Projects Agency took issue Wednesday with the Environmental Protection Agency's logic for recommending a new radiation safety standard for the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.

In an interview from Carson City, state Nuclear Projects Agency chief Bob Loux said based on the EPA's estimates there will be 10 million cancer deaths over 1 million years that result from storing highly radioactive spent fuel in the mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

While that appears to be a worst case affecting 25,000 generations, Loux said that means nonetheless that 10 million deaths from the repository's operation is acceptable under the EPA's new rule.

To satisfy a court ruling, the EPA on Tuesday issued a two-tiered 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 radiation dose limits were set at 15 millirem and 350 millirem per year, respectively, above natural background.

A millirem is a small amount of energy that produces the same biological effect as a similar unit of absorbed dose from ordinary X-rays.

For comparison, a chest X-ray exposes a patient to 10 millirem while a mammogram results in a 30 millirem exposure.

A person living in the United States receives an annual average 300-millirem dose of radiation from natural and man-made sources. Radon accounts for 55 percent of background radiation components.

Loux also expressed concern that the EPA, in his view, has backpedaled from its previous stance that a 150 millirem is unacceptable.

He cited a June 2001 written response from the EPA in which the agency stated, "No regulatory body would consider doses of 150 millirem to be acceptable."

Four years later, the EPA has ignored its own stated position and instead proposed a standard for the Yucca Mountain project that's more than twice that, Loux noted.

An EPA spokesman said the EPA's technical staff will consider the state's concerns in the course of hearings on the revised standard.

"EPA welcomes the chance to review and consider comments and criticisms during the upcoming 60-day public comment period and during the three planned hearings -- two in Nevada and one in Washington, D.C.," the spokesman, John Millet, said in an e-mail.

Per F. Peterson, nuclear engineering professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said the recommended EPA standard goes beyond what is required for disposal of non-radioactive materials.

"Basically, there are no standards that specify performance limits past 10,000 years, so anything that the EPA would require for Yucca Mountain past 10,000 years would be more protective than what we currently require for the disposal of toxic chemicals and mining wastes," Peterson wrote in an e-mail.

Meanwhile, a couple of environmental watchdog groups and a local industrial hygienist who is an outspoken critic of the government's plans for Yucca Mountain asserted that the EPA's proposed standard fails to protect the public's long-term health and safety.

"I think it's a scam," said Peggy Maze Johnson, executive director of Citizen Alert, a statewide environmental group. "We've been worried about a two-tiered standard. ... I would imagine we'll be weighing in on a lawsuit with the state like we did in the original one."

Wenonah Hauter, director of the energy program for Public Citizen, a national organization, said in a statement setting two standards "is an arbitrary decision designed to facilitate the licensing of the project rather than make it safe for those who live near the site."

Jacob Paz, a former industrial hygienist for a Nevada Test Site contractor, said in a letter to Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., that the EPA's proposal fails to consider the so-called "bystander effect," in which radiation produces changes in cells that were not directly hit by it but are in the vicinity of those that were.

"Even exposure to background radiation causes some cancers," Paz wrote.

Stephens Washington Bureau chief Steve Tetreault contributed to this report.