EPA to tighten radiation-emission standards

Friday, Aug. 13, 1999 | 11:26 a.m.

The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to issue strict limits early next week to protect people and the environment from radiation releases that might escape a proposed high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.

The EPA proposal for a limit of 15 millirems a year adds another standard for the Yucca Mountain project and upset nuclear industry representatives.

Southern Nevadans receive about 330 millirems a year from all sources of radiation -- most of them natural, such as sun rays and rock. Whatever limits are set on a nuclear waste repository would be in addition to that.

In addition to the 15 millirem-a-year rule, the EPA is proposing to limit the amount of contaminated ground water that can escape from the mountain. The radiation would be measured at the fence line of the project, about 12 miles from the actual repository.

The limits would be in effect for 10,000 years, a time span arbitrarily chosen by scientists who have been working on Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, for the past 20 years.

In contrast, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the agency that would issue a license to build and operate a high-level nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, has proposed a limit of 25 millirems of radiation and no limit on radiation in ground water. The EPA, however, is responsible for setting radiation standards.

The Department of Energy is responsible for monitoring radiation moving through and outside Yucca Mountain. The EPA is concerned about keeping radiation out of water and air, the most likely pathways for exposure to people.

It would take 310,000 years to reach the 25 millirem dose as more and more radioactive water leaks from Yucca Mountain, Nuclear Regulatory Commission scientists say. A peak dose of 85 millirems a year would be reached 620,000 years after a dump opens, the scientists predict.

The NRC is still working on its final rule for Yucca Mountain radiation exposure, commission spokeswoman Sue Gagner said. The NRC has said during a series of public hearings on its rule earlier this year that it will obey the EPA limit.

However, the nuclear industry is unhappy with a stricter exposure rule.

In a July 20 letter to the Office of Management and Budget, Nuclear Energy Institute President Robert W. Bishop said that if the EPA proposed a stricter exposure standard than the NRC and a separate ground water rule, the repository project would be threatened because it would cost too much money to build it to meet the limit.

The industry group did not specify how much more the repository might cost. The institute is the lobbying arm of the nuclear industry.

Bishop urged the Office of Management and Budget to set a radiation limit based on an overall computer model that spells out how a repository at Yucca Mountain would work. This same recommendation was made by the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. In other words, the repository would either pass or fail a single test that combines the two limits, rather than be disqualified for ground water moving too fast or for nuclear waste containers cracking and releasing their contents too soon.

Both the DOE and the NRC based their findings on a 1995 National Academy of Sciences report that recommended no separate ground water limit on radiation at Yucca Mountain.

Environmental groups rejected the EPA's proposed limit, saying it is too lenient and would lead to cancer and genetic defects.

"Drafting a standard that does not fully protect all Nevadans is an example of the federal government ignoring its moral obligation to protect its citizens," Wenonah Hauter, project director of Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy program.

"The children of the next 1,000 generations should not be cancer patients because the nuclear industry insists on less protection," Hauter said.

Public Citizen, a group formed by Ralph Nader, also criticized the EPA's limit of 10,000 years and its choice to measure the radiation dose starting at 12 miles away from the repository, rather than at the edge of the dump itself.