Nuke panel to review proposed radiation limits

Thursday, June 17, 1999 | 10:42 a.m.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission listened to frustrated Nevadans who fear the agency will rubber stamp a high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain and members promised to review proposed radiation limits.

In a second round of meetings in Southern Nevada this year, the commission's staff said the NRC will review everything from its 22-year-old rules for transporting highly radioactive wastes to radiation exposure limits, based on comments made by state officials and the public.

The commission has proposed a limit that would allow a person within 12 miles of Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, to be exposed to up to 25 millirems of radiation annually. That amount of radiation is equal to a single chest X-ray. The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed a limit of 15 millirems per year.

Bill Reamer of the NRC's high-level nuclear waste division told residents that if the Environmental Protection Agency settles on a 15 millirem limit, the commission will accept it.

And Reamer made it clear that the NRC stood ready to protect the public's health and safety, not to hand the Department of Energy a license for a repository then leave.

The commission plans to schedule more public hearings after the DOE releases its draft environmental impact statement for the mountain at the end of July.

"We are here for the long term," Reamer said. "We are here as an agency independent of the DOE."

Commission members spent four hours answering questions of 30 people who came to UNLV's Tam Alumni Center for the hearing and encouraged them to continue providing public comment.

If the commission discovers that Yucca Mountain cannot contain the 70,000 tons of highly radioactive commercial and defense wastes, the NRC will not allow any burial, the NRC's Janet Kotra said. "That limit was set by Congress," she noted, so the amount of wastes might overwhelm a proposed repository.

The commission could also force the DOE to remove wastes already buried at Yucca Mountain if they posed a health or safety threat to people or the environment within 50 years, the time allowed by law to retrieve wastes.

Once any repository closes, the NRC still has the authority to monitor its performance, Kotra said.

The commission could demand expensive full-scale nuclear waste container tests, Lewis said. Current regulations require only computer simulations, not experiments under real-world conditions for shipping containers. About 1,300 highly radioactive cargos have been trucked across the country in 20 years.

Nevada nuclear transportation consultant Robert Halstead has tried to encourage the DOE, in charge of Yucca Mountain studies, to consider in addition the dangers of terrorism and sabotage of radioactive shipments en route to the mountain.

The NRC is considering terrorism, Lewis said. However, the commission considers a stolen container taken to an urban area a bigger threat, he said. The NRC is focusing on how to stop such a threat.

Lewis said the commission plans to come back to Las Vegas and two other undetermined Nevada locations to hear public concerns later this year.