DOE step makes Yucca more likely

Mary Manning and Benjamin Grove

Wednesday, June 6, 2001 | 11:22 a.m.

The Environmental Protection Agency today reaffirmed its radiation standard for burying nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, but a change in the technical details may make it easier for the Department of Energy to build a repository.

The DOE is studying Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as the only site to bury 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste from commercial reactors and defense activities.

The EPA radiation standard is a major step toward allowing Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham to recommend the site to Congress later this year. It allows the Energy Department to finish the required environmental studies.

Abraham said Tuesday the repository would meet whatever standards the EPA adopted.

The standards become official at an interesting time: President Bush has taken flak for not promoting environmentally friendly policies, and White House officials are trying to polish his image on green issues.

But Bush also has made building new nuclear power plants part of his national energy strategy. Key to nuclear expansion is the construction of a Yucca repository so that the nation's nuclear power plants have a place to bury their wastes.

Neither proponents nor opponents of the nuclear dump were satisfied with the EPA's standard today.

The standards, although not perfect, will be a "powerful tool" in battling to kill the Yucca project, Sen. Harry Reid's spokesman Nathan Naylor said. Reid is Senate majority whip and a vocal opponent of the repository.

"Right now, the fight moves on the science," Naylor said. "That is where we think Yucca will be disqualified as a site."

After a behind-the-scenes battle between the EPA and the nuclear industry over the standard, the EPA stuck to its limit on radiation allowed in ground water proposed by the Clinton administration.

The EPA standard would allow a nearby resident to receive 15 millirems of total radiation exposure in a year from Yucca Mountain, 4 millirems of that through ground water. The average chest X-ray is 5 millirems, and an average person receives 360 millirems a year from natural sources, such as the sun and soils.

"These are strong standards, and they should be," EPA administrator Christie Whitman said today. "We designed them to ensure that people living near this potential repository will be protected now and for future generations."

However, the EPA radiation exposure limit for ground water will be easier to meet, because a larger volume of water is allowed to dilute the amount of radiation, according to internal documents obtained by the Sun.

In mid-April the EPA had set the volume of water at 1,285 acre-feet, meaning that the DOE could not allow more than 4 millirems of radiation in that amount of water drawn from a mile-wide plume expected to reach Amargosa Valley after 10,000 years. An acre-foot of water is 326,000 gallons of water, enough to serve a family of four for a year.

Under the revised standard, it would take more than twice as much water -- 3,000 acre feet -- before the radiation limit is exceeded.

"It makes the standard more lenient and easier to comply with," Bob Loux, director of the state Agency for Nuclear Projects, said.

The EPA is helping the DOE to meet the standard by diluting the radiation to keep it below the allowable limit, said Steve Frishman, technical advisor to the state Agency for Nuclear Projects.

"By measuring the ground water standards so far away from the facility, the government is counting on using Nevada's water table to dilute the waste," Rep. Shelley Berkley said.