EPA’s Yucca Mountain radiation standards don’t impress NRC

Friday, Aug. 20, 1999 | 4:14 a.m.

The Clinton administration agreed to a new radiation limit proposed by the federal Environmental Protection Agency if a nuclear waste repository is built at Yucca Mountain, but a licensing agency vowed to continue with its own rule.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which must license any repository, reacted immediately to the stricter limit for radiation exposure proposed by the EPA on Thursday, saying it will continue to work on issuing its own standard within a year. By law the NRC must amend its high-level nuclear waste rule to conform to a final rule by EPA.

"However, the NRC would be concerned with any provision in the proposed standard that appeared intended to tell NRC how to implement the standard," a prepared NRC statement said. The commission has said in the past it would amend its rule once the EPA issued its final rule.

"I am extremely pleased the White House listened to the EPA and Administrator Carol Browner instead of the industry and their advocates on the big questions of radiation levels and the need for a ground water standard," Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev., said today.

The EPA set a radiation limit of 15 millirems a year for a proposed repository 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas at Yucca Mountain. In addition, the agency issued a separate ground water limit that meets the Safe Drinking Water Act standards.

The EPA's proposed rule is based on a modern calculation called a "committed effective dose equation." The equation estimates that the 15 millirems a year would create a probability of seven cancer deaths a year in a population of 1 million people.

The NRC proposed a radiation dose of 25 millirems a year in February. The commission did not consider a ground water protection limit.

Southern Nevada residents receive about 330 millirems of radiation a year from all sources, including the sun's rays, rock, Coleman lantern mantles and smoke detectors.

Others criticized the proposed EPA rule as too lenient when it comes to protecting public health and safety.

Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects Director Bob Loux said the EPA's radiation limit is inadequate to protect the public and the environment for thousands of years.

The proposed limit is comparable to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Albuquerque, N.M., where the federal government is burying radioactive defense wastes containing plutonium.

The deadly nuclear wastes that would come to Nevada's Yucca Mountain would contain all forms of radioactivity, Loux said.

Geologist Steve Frishman, a technical policy coordinator for the state agency, said he is concerned at what distance from a repository the EPA limit would apply.

The EPA is proposing a number of options, ranging from the boundary of the repository to the edge of the Nevada Test Site to 12 miles off the site.

"I'm very concerned about the range of possible limits where the standard will apply," Frishman said. "It should be set near the buried waste, if it is going to protect the public from a repository."

Bryan and the rest of Nevada's congressional delegation said that the EPA's proposed radiation limit was a step in the right direction, but they reacted cautiously to the draft rule.

"I think this is a positive step for us," Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said, adding she still believes a high-level nuclear waste dump opening in Nevada by 2010 is a bad idea.