EPA Plans Yucca Radiation Limits

["Stabin, Michael" <michael.g.stabin@vanderbilt.edu>]

WASHINGTON, 20 Sep 2004 - Trying to overcome a possibly crippling court

decision, the Environmental Protection Agency (search) hopes to have a

proposal by early next year on new radiation exposure limits at a

proposed nuclear waste site in Nevada. 



Jeffrey Holmstead, chief of EPA's air and radiation programs, told a

panel of scientists Monday that a wide range of options is being

considered that would not require Congress to intervene in the

politically charged issue.



The future of the waste project at Yucca Mountain (search) in the Nevada

desert was put into jeopardy when a federal appeals court rejected an

EPA radiation exposure standard in July that was tied to 10,000 years

into the future, even though some of the waste will be at its most

dangerous thousands of years later.



The court said EPA failed to take into account a 1995 National Academy

of Sciences (search) recommendation that the standard be set at periods

of peak-radiation, although Congress required that the recommendations

be followed. Opponents of the project have argued that the design of the

waste site as it is now contemplated cannot meet a standard set that far

into the future.



Members of the Board of Radioactive Waste Management (search), a part of

the National Academy of Sciences, examined at a meeting Monday the

implications of the court case and possible options for future action.

The board frequently offers a forum to examine waste management issues.



Robert Fri, chairman of the National Academy panel that wrote the 1995

report cited by the court, suggested the EPA satisfy the court's

objections only by significantly altering its standard more in line with

what his group had recommended.



That would involve going well beyond 10,000 years, but not necessarily

so far into the future that risk modeling, or even the proposed Yucca

design, might be useless, Fri suggested.



EPA would have to adopt a less conservative approach to determining

public risks from exposure, said Fri, a scholar at the environmental

think tank Resources for the Future.



Holmstead said the EPA is "at the beginning of the process of

determining what options might be" available but would not discuss

specific proposals. Going beyond 10,000 years for a radiation standard

"is a real challenge," he conceded.



A panel member, Norine Noonan, dean of the School of Science and

Mathematics at the College of Charleston in South Carolina, asked

whether EPA might assume a standard based on risk that was envisioned in

the 1995 National Academy study. Holmstead said it was an option on the

table with others.



After the session, Holmstead told reporters that the agency is working

as quickly as it can to develop a standard to meet the court's

misgivings, and it would be possible to have a standard ready by early

next year.



Congress also could intervene by passing legislation to free the EPA

from having to take into consideration the 1995 National Academy

recommendations.



Sam Fowler, the senior Democratic staff member on the Senate Energy and

Natural Resources Committee, told the scientists such a move could

appear to the public as Congress "trying to dumb down the standard" for

political reasons. Strong opposition to the Yucca project by Nevada's

senators, a Democrat and a Republican, also would make it difficult to

pass such legislation.



Whether the impasse over an acceptable radiation standard eventually

could scuttle the Yucca Mountain project remains to be seen.

Nevertheless, supporters acknowledge it casts serious doubt on the

Energy Department's plan to open the waste site by 2010.



Trying to establish public risks tens of thousands of years into the

future is a staggering undertaking, scientists acknowledged at Monday's

meeting.



More than 45,000 tons of used reactor fuel already are in temporary

storage at commercial power plants and defense facilities in 34 states

awaiting shipment to a central repository.



"What do you do if the very best solution you can think of doesn't meet

the (radiation) standard?" environmental scholar Fri asked. "The stuff

is not going to go away."





http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,132951,00.html



 

Mike



Michael G. Stabin, PhD, CHP

Assistant Professor of Radiology and Radiological Sciences 

Department of Radiology and Radiological Sciences 

Vanderbilt University 

1161 21st Avenue South

Nashville, TN 37232-2675 

Phone (615) 343-0068

Fax   (615) 322-3764

Pager (615) 835-5153

e-mail     michael.g.stabin@vanderbilt.edu 

internet   www.doseinfo-radar.com



 



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