Fed agencies still at odds on limits of radiation

Benjamin Grove

Monday, July 17, 2000 | 11:06 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- The two federal agencies that have long disagreed about how much radiation could safely be emitted from a nuclear waste dump in Nevada are still bickering with no compromise in sight, a recent report said.

Both the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Environmental Protection Agency are working to settle their dispute. But "... they have had long-standing differences, and we question whether their latest efforts will resolve these differences without congressional intervention," according to a report released Friday by Congress' investigative body, the General Accounting Office.

At issue is what amount of radiation could safely be released from Yucca Mountain if it one day becomes the nation's burial ground for high-level nuclear waste.

The NRC suggests 25 millirems of radiation per year. The EPA suggests a stricter 15 millirems, with a separate 4 millirems limit for ground water. For comparison, a chest X-ray emits about 5 millirems.

"There's always hope" that the NRC and EPA will agree on a standard soon, NRC spokeswoman Mindy Landau said. "But the bottom line is the same. Nobody has changed their mind. What we've been saying all along is that we believe our standard is safe."

An EPA official said the sticking point is the ground water standard.

"We believe you need a separate standard in order to make sure those natural resources are protected," said Frank Marcinowski, director of the EPA's radiation protection division.

The issue is politically charged. Those who oppose the Yucca waste dump -- led by Nevada's members in Congress -- favor the EPA standard. Yucca supporters prefer the NRC standard because the EPA standard may be impossibly strict.

"Dueling NRC and EPA regulatory standards stand as an impediment to national progress on waste disposal ... and ultimately the future of nuclear power in this country," Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and a Yucca supporter, said in a written statement. Congress should force the EPA and NRC to compromise or Congress should pick a standard on its own, Domenici said.

Current law, set by Congress, says the EPA has the standard-setting authority.

"Congress should decide who sets the standards -- and Congress did," said David Lemmon, spokesman for Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev. "Now these guys (pro-Yucca lawmakers) are trying to change the rules."

Domenici requested the GAO study, which also reported that a lack of scientific evidence on the effects of low-level radiation makes it difficult to prove one standard better than the other.

"In the absence of more conclusive data, scientists have assumed that even the smallest radiation exposure carries a risk," the report said.

The NRC standard conforms to internationally accepted standards, the GAO said. The National Academy of Sciences has said the EPA standards are "technically unsupported," the report said.

"However, the Academy recognizes that EPA has the authority to establish a separate groundwater limit for Yucca Mountain, and EPA believes its groundwater protection approach for the repository to be technically justified," the GAO said.

The GAO also examined the cost of implementing both standards. Either standard would carry and "immense" price tag, the report said.

By way of example, the report pointed to a DOE analysis showing that cleaning up test ranges at the Nevada Test Site showed that costs were three times higher to obtain a 25-millirems standard than a 100-millirems standard.