For the second time in three public hearings, the Environmental Protection Agency's staff of eight outnumbered the speakers Wednesday who testified on the agency's proposed radiation protection standard for the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.

Bill Vasconi, a longtime supporter of the project to dispose 77,000 tons of spent radioactive fuel in the mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, capped off the seven who spoke before the EPA panel.

He said more people will be killed in vehicle accidents and by lightning than will die from "those things nuclear" including radiation allowed under the EPA's two-tiered standard.

The proposed standard will cover radioactive releases for 10,000 years under a more stringent guideline than the one for 1 million years.

In either case, Vasconi said afterward, "We can live with those."

His viewpoint was more in line with the two who testified at Monday's hearing in Amargosa Valley than the 14 speakers who criticized the EPA's proposal Tuesday night at the Cashman Center.

Representatives for Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., delivered statements at Tuesday's hearing.

At that hearing, Ian Zabarte, speaking for Western Shoshones, said the EPA's proposed protections do not take into account the lifestyles and diets of American Indians who thrive off the land and regard Yucca Mountain as sacred .

"Right now, a particular class of people are being disenfranchised," he said.

At a Tuesday discussion, Calvin Meyers of the Moapa Band of Paiutes said that his people have not been consulted in the EPA's process and that the Yucca Mountain Project is driven by the Department of Energy with ratepayers money to benefit the nuclear power industry.

"Money can't buy your way out of a coffin, and that's where you're putting my people," Meyers said.

Environmentalists Jane Feldman of the local Sierra Club and Peggy Maze Johnson of Citizen Alert said Tuesday night the plan is unacceptable because it allows one cancer case for every 36 people.