Letter: EPA’s radiation standard almost as bad as NRC’s

Monday, June 4, 2001 | 9:14 a.m.

In the Sun's May 24 article, "EPA ombudsman pledges to examine radiation standards," it was reported that "Nevada officials and dump opponents support the EPA's standard, because it could disqualify a repository at Yucca Mountain."

The Nuclear Information and Resource Service actually has very serious concerns with the EPA's proposed standards, as do almost all dump opponents who follow the absurd Byzantine regulatory issues closely. EPA's proposal would create a 12-mile buffer zone in an ill-conceived notion that dilution is the solution to radioactive pollution. Diluting radiation in the groundwater beneath Yucca Mountain is absurd, because it is already a source of drinking water for communities downstream in Amargosa Valley, and will remain so.

The EPA proposal would also cut off any regulations at 10,000 years, while the waste will remain deadly for hundreds of thousands of years, and the Energy Department predicts peak radiation doses to the public would occur after 10,000 years. That means EPA knows the long-term danger and plans to do nothing about it. There are more bad parts of the EPA proposal, but these examples already show why dump opponents have significant problems with EPA's proposal. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the DOE merely have worse proposals than EPA's bad one. The nuclear power industry and its lobbyists are pressuring all the federal agencies involved to set weak standards for Yucca Mountain.

KEVIN KAMPS, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, Washington, D.C.