Standards Set for First Atomic-Waste Dump Would Be Too Strict, Nuclear Panel Is Told
Radiation standards for the nation’s first dump for high-level atomic wastes are too stringent and could delay the facility’s completion beyond a 1998 deadline, an advisory group told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Monday.
The NRC’s Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards said that the standards, issued in August by the EPA, “are unreasonably restrictive and . . . will undoubtedly introduce unnecessary obstacles” to licensing the dump.
The panel’s own staff studying radioactive waste and the Department of Energy both supported the EPA standards as easily achievable, however.
The standards require that the containment for the 2,500-foot underground repository hold within specific limits the radioactivity released over a period of 10,000 years.
The effect of the limits, officials said, is to require that the amount of radiation released should be enough to cause no more than one cancer death in 10 years, or 1,000 cancer deaths over the facility’s projected 10,000-year period of use.
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