Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

YUCCA MOUNTAIN FIGHT: Sandoval recruits supporters

Nevada attorney general writes letters to colleagues in 10 states to oppose EPA radiation standards

CARSON CITY -- Attorney General Brian Sandoval on Tuesday sent letters to the attorneys general in 10 states urging them to speak out about what he called unacceptable proposed radiation standards for the planned nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.

Letters sent to the attorneys general in Idaho, Washington, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Tennessee, South Carolina, Kentucky, Ohio and New York ask them to oppose the standards during the 60-day public comment period that ends Oct. 21.

Nevada officials believe those 10 states will be most affected by the radiation standards proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency.

"I am writing to alert you to a disturbing proposed rule that, if promulgated, has the clear potential to destabilize the cleanup standards for all Department of Energy facilities, including the DOE facility in your state," Sandoval said.

The proposed standard for Yucca Mountain "threatens to undermine the negotiations and tri-party cleanup agreements that have taken years for states to develop for the protection of their citizens from DOE's nuclear contamination," he said.

Sandoval said the EPA previously determined that people should be exposed to no more than 15 millirems per year. The new standard would permit exposures of between 350 and 1,050 millirem per year, depending on whether median or mean exposures are considered.

"This amounts to the least stringent radiation protection standard in the world by far," he said.

A person living in the United States receives an average annual 300 millirem dose of radiation from natural and man-made sources. A millirem is a small amount of energy.

An EPA official has 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.

Jeffrey Holmstead, EPA assistant administrator for air and radiation, has 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, which seeks to entomb 77,000 tons of nuclear waste inside the mountain 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, believes it can meet the proposed EPA standard.

"The new standard is based on EPA's unstudied view that it is appropriate to expose unconsenting local populations to high levels of radiation so long as they do not exceed the highest levels of natural background radiation tolerated in the most radiation-prone states, such as Colorado," Sandoval said in the letter to Colorado Attorney General John Suthers.

In addition to the letters, Sandoval sent some background information on the proposed EPA standard.

It says the EPA proposal:

• Abandons any long-term groundwater protection standard.

• Includes home radon exposure in calculations of natural background levels used to set thresholds, a practice never done in such calculations because home radon exposure is routinely mitigated.

• Assumes it is ethically permissible to expose future generations to radiation levels far higher than would be tolerated today.