New Radiation Levels Proposed for Waste Site

The Environmental Protection Agency gave a boost Tuesday to plans for a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, proposing safety rules for radiation levels a million years from now that the Department of Energy said the project could meet.

Under the proposed standard, said Jeffrey Holmstead, the EPA’s assistant administrator for air and radiation, “any hypothetical person living right next to the repository” would be exposed to the same radiation levels that people in Denver are exposed to now.

A dispute over the radiation standard has delayed the government’s plans to bury canisters containing tens of thousands of tons of radioactive waste, mostly spent rods from nuclear power plants, in the Nevada desert about 90 miles north of Las Vegas. The EPA’s previous standard had been thrown out in court.

Tuesday’s announcement of the revised standard is “clearly a positive step,” said spokesman Craig Stevens of the Department of Energy. “Should this proposed rule become final, it is a standard that the Department of Energy believes it can meet.”

But critics said the dump could meet the standard only because the rules were dangerously lax.

“You could build a repository in Disneyland and meet this standard,” said Robert R. Loux, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects.

The new rule would force the Energy Department to design the dump in a way that would expose neighbors to less than 15 millirems of radiation a year, an amount comparable to a chest X-ray.

But that standard would disappear after 10,000 years. From then to 1 million years, the dump could expose its neighbors to up to 350 millirems of radiation a year through the atmosphere -- and unlimited radiation through groundwater.

One group that supported the notion of higher exposure limits after 10,000 years was the Electric Power Research Institute, a trade association for electric utilities and generators. Still, it requested long-term limits of 100 millirems a year -- far lower than the level the EPA proposed.

By comparison, the EPA would not permit nuclear plants to expose people within two miles to more than 25 millirems a year. The agency allows exposures of up to 100 millirems a year at the Nevada Test Site, where atomic bombs were tested.

The EPA said it based the 350-millirem-a-year figure on the typical level of background radiation in the United States.

People are already exposed, on average, to between 300 and 400 millirems each year, mostly from radon in buildings, the sun and cosmic radiation.

Exposure is greater in areas at higher elevations, such as Denver.

A federal appellate court ruled a year ago that the EPA’s previous standard was inadequate because it did not address exposure beyond 10,000 years.

The National Academy of Sciences, along with Department of Energy scientists, have said the canisters isolating the waste were likely to break down by then, allowing groundwater to carry some of the most dangerous radioisotopes to the surface.

“We thought it would be bad, but not this bad,” said lawyer Joe Egan, who represented the state of Nevada in the lawsuit that led to the proposed new rule. “They gave the repository a complete pass and established an unprecedentedly lenient standard. It would be by far the most lenient standard in the world if it were to be adopted as proposed.”

Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), a longtime critic of the waste site, joined in the chorus of condemnation. “What the agency released today is nothing more than voodoo science and arbitrary numbers,” he said.

Before Yucca Mountain could accept any uranium rods from nuclear plants around the country, it must still clear many obstacles. The EPA is accepting 60 days of public comment on the rule. If the agency decides to keep the rule, the Energy Department would then have to prove that the dump could live up to the standard. The department is not expected to apply for a license for the facility until at least next year.

But first, the state of Nevada promises to go back to court.

“If this bogus new standard, or anything close to it, ends up being adopted by EPA, Nevada will sue them again,” Nevada Atty. Gen. Brian Sandoval said.