EPA accused of manipulating Yucca rules

Thursday, Oct. 21, 1999 | 11:36 a.m.

A Nevada official accused the federal Environmental Protection Agency of setting a radiation exposure limit that will allow the construction of an unsafe, high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.

According to Executive Director of the state Agency for Nuclear Projects Bob Loux's Wednesday testimony in Las Vegas, the EPA should have gone beyond its proposed limit of 15 millirems -- equal to the radiation in 1 1/2 chest X-rays -- and added radioactive gases (the effects of a dry climate and rapid ground water releases).

Loux's agency oversees the federal repository study.

The EPA's proposal, which is the stricter of two offered, will allow people to be exposed to too much radiation over the thousands of years that the repository would exist, Loux said. "This is a clear case where the EPA developed a standard to allow the continued progress on a repository at Yucca Mountain," he added.

In 1992 Congress ordered the EPA to set the radiation standard for a proposed repository at Yucca Mountain, which is 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The mountain is the only site under study in line to become a national tomb for 70,000 tons of highly radioactive waste.

The EPA proposed its radiation restrictions on Aug. 28, after the Nuclear Regulatory Commission proposed a standard on its own of 25 millirems -- or 2 1/2 chest X-rays' worth of radiation.

The NRC standard also includes exposure from ground water, air, drinking water, irrigation water, vapors and soils, Janet Phelan Kotra of the NRC's waste management division noted.

However, the NRC will meet whatever standard the EPA decides. "The commission will abide by whatever standard the EPA sets," she said.

The trouble with EPA's radiation limit, Phelm said, comes from the U.S. Department of Energy. The DOE has changed its repository goal from preventing the escape of the wastes to delaying their release.

According to Loux, the DOE officials have said that the mountain will eventually allow radiation to escape. The DOE plan is to rely on man-made barriers such as drip shields to prevent ground water from reaching buried containers and corroding them, which allows the radiation to escape sooner.

"This is a clear case in which the EPA has manipulated its regulation to compensate for the inadequacies of the Yucca Mountain site, in order to enable repository development to continue to be feasible at Yucca Mountain," Loux said.

In addition, Loux said, the EPA's radiation limit was drafted for a 10,000-year period, even though the largest doses to people would not happen until long after that time.

The DOE has calculated that doses will increase as man-made barrier fail, allowing corrosion to eat through and the radiation to escape.

When the worst dose will occur is the hardest prediction to make. The calculated peak dose is far above that proposed in the EPA limit, Loux said, and it exceeds any public radiation protection standard considered acceptable anywhere in the world.

"This evasion of regulatory responsibility is unacceptable despite EPA's argument that beyond 10,000 years uncertainties in performance assessment become overwhelming," Loux said.

The EPA will accept written comments on its proposed exposure limit until Nov. 26. The agency has held public hearings in Washington, D.C., Amargosa Valley and Las Vegas. A hearing in Atlanta is scheduled today.