Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

YUCCA MOUNTAIN: EPA official defends rule

Proposal for new radiation standard for nuclear waste repository under study

WASHINGTON -- An Environmental Protection Agency official Monday defended proposed new radiation safety standards for Yucca Mountain and said they amounted to the most stringent nuclear waste protections in the nation.

"We ensure that Yucca Mountain is as safe as any other disposal system that could be developed for high-level waste" and mixed nuclear waste, said Elizabeth Cotsworth, EPA director of the Office of Radiation and Indoor Air.

Cotsworth delivered a presentation to the Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board, a branch of the National Academies of Sciences that monitors the Yucca project.

The EPA is studying public comments on the proposed safety rules unveiled in August. The Department of Energy would need to show it could meet the standards to obtain a license to bury highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel at the Nevada site.

Cotsworth said the EPA might extend the public comment period beyond Oct. 21. She said no schedule has been set for finalizing the regulation, which would be a step forward for the repository program.

Public hearings are scheduled for Oct. 3 in Amargosa Valley, Oct. 4-5 in Las Vegas and Oct. 11 in Washington, D.C.

Nevada elected leaders and other Yucca Mountain critics dispute the EPA's characterization of the radiation standard. They charge it was structured to ensure that the Department of Energy could comply with it and speed the opening of a repository.

Attorney General Brian Sandoval has said the state will sue the EPA unless the proposed regulation is changed.

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

The EPA proposed new Yucca Mountain radiation rules after a federal appeals court in July 2004 invalidated parts of the previous regulation.

The new EPA proposal contains two parts.

For the first 10,000 years of repository operations, the Energy Department would need to show that a person living about 11 miles away would be exposed to no more than 15 millirem of radiation annually from Yucca Mountain.

EPA officials said that a routine chest X-ray emits 10 millirem and that a mammogram emits 30 millirem.

For the period beyond 10,000 years, when scientists are more uncertain of climate, geology and social changes that might occur, EPA has proposed to set the repository exposure limit at 350 millirem.

Cotsworth said that level was tied to what Colorado residents receive in background radiation from soil, rocks, the sun and other natural sources.

"For very long times, total radiation exposures to (individuals) will be no higher than natural levels people live with routinely in other parts of the country," Cotsworth told the science panel.

The EPA proposal would require the Energy Department to perform more analyses on how climate changes, earthquakes, volcanic activity and corrosion of nuclear waste canister would affect the release of radiation into the environment over a million-year time frame.

"We are proposing to protect public health up to a million years," Cotsworth said. "Clearly no other environmental regulation in the U.S. looking at any risk has ever attempted to regulate for such an extended period of time."