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EPA's Yucca Mountain Standard Criticized

Posted on: Monday, 6 March 2006, 18:00 CST

By Keith Rogers

By KEITH ROGERS

REVIEW-JOURNAL

In stark contrast to the previous night, more than a dozen speakers Tuesday castigated the Environmental Protection Agency's proposal for protecting the public from radioactive releases at the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.

One critic, Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency chief Bob Loux, said the EPA's proposal is an absurd attempt at "morally bankrupt standard-setting," that fails to protect future generations of Nevadans.

He said the proposal for a more lenient standard between 10,000 years and 1 million years after the repository opens, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, contradicts the intent of last year's court ruling. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found the EPA's first attempt at setting a radiation safety standard in 2001 didn't cover the time when peak doses will occur in hundreds of thousands of years.

Loux said EPA representatives told Nevada officials that the reason for proposing a less protective standard over 1 million years than for the first 10,000 years is because a tougher standard "would disqualify Yucca Mountain, and EPA has been directed to assure that doesn't happen."

"EPA has manufactured a standard tailored to fit the site, not to protect public health and safety," he told a panel that included Elizabeth Cotsworth, director of the EPA's Office of Radiation and Indoor Air.

"If adopted the proposed Yucca Mountain standard will permit countless generations of Nevadans to be intentionally exposed to levels of radiation that would never be tolerated elsewhere either in the United States or internationally," Loux said.

Before Monday night's hearing, Cotsworth acknowledged that the EPA's attempt to set a standard to cover 1 million years "is unique. ... We don't intend that the approach we have used at Yucca Mountain would apply in other regulatory programs."

Loux's comments were echoed by 14 others who called for the EPA to strike its proposal and produce a standard that at least extends protections for the first 10,000 years out to 1 million years, including the part that limits radioactivity in groundwater.

The only two speakers at Monday night's hearing in Amargosa Valley, the community closest to Yucca Mountain, said the EPA's proposed dose limits of 15 millirem and 350 millirem per year for 10,000 and 1 million years, respectively, are more than adequate.

The EPA notes that a chest X-ray exposes a patient to 10 millirem and a mammogram results in a 30 millirem exposure.

But at Tuesday's hearing and roundtable discussion at the Cashman Center, industrial hygienist Jacob Paz said that comparison is misleading because radiation from 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste and spent nuclear fuel destined for Yucca Mountain is more penetrating and doesn't just pass through the body like X-rays, but is deposited in bone matter at higher energy levels.

About 75 people attended the discussion and hearing, including 30 from Culinary Local 226 who carried signs that read, "No Nuke Dump in Nevada."

Shannon Raborn, who called the EPA's work "voodoo science," delivered a statement from Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., that said, "EPA's standard is wholly inadequate, does not meet the law's requirements and does not protect public health. It is another example of this administration's myopic pursuit of Yucca Mountain in the face of scientific uncertainty, falsification of information and massive public opposition."

In written testimony, Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., stated that "the EPA has an obligation to protect public safety today, tomorrow and in a million years. It should not speculate that a standard which is not deemed safe today could miraculously become a safe standard in the future."

Source: Las Vegas Review - Journal

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