Nevadans put more heat on Bush over Yucca safety rules

Benjamin Grove

Monday, March 5, 2001 | 11:45 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Nevada officials are putting more pressure on the Bush administration to allow the Environmental Protection Agency, not the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, to set safety rules for Yucca Mountain.

Rep. Shelley Berkley sent a letter today to Bush urging him to back the EPA in a standoff the agency has with the NRC over radiation release levels for the planned nuclear waste repository 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

"I respectfully request that you deny the DOE and NRC lobbying efforts and continue to advocate the EPA's authority in setting these types of public health regulations," Berkley wrote.

Gov. Kenny Guinn also stressed Nevada's stance when he met with EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman last week in Washington. Whitman told Guinn she would stand behind the EPA's standard over that of the NRC, Guinn said.

The Department of Energy plans to make Yucca Mountain the nation's nuclear waste burial ground for 77,000 tons of highly radioactive spent fuel as early as 2010.

But after years of debate the EPA and NRC are still at odds over just how much radiation the waste could safely release into the environment. The EPA supports a 15 millirem-a-year limit, with a separate four millirem standard for ground water. The NRC says it would be safe to allow 25 millirems of radiation a year to be release, with no separate ground water standard. A typical chest X-ray can range from 5 to 10 millirems.

Current law gives the EPA authority to set the standard, although there is pressure in Congress among Yucca backers to use the NRC standard. The EPA's proposal was submitted to the president's Office of Management and Budget on Jan. 19, the day before President Clinton left office, and is undergoing a typical review process that can take several months, an EPA spokeswoman said today.

Both the EPA and NRC have lined up scores of documents and scientists who back their stances. A report released by the General Accounting Office in July last year concluded the EPA and NRC "have had long-standing differences, and we question whether their latest efforts will resolve these differences without congressional intervention." There has been "no new progress to date" in resolving the two stances, an NRC spokeswoman said today.

Nevada officials prefer the stricter EPA standard. But the EPA rules could be impossibly strict, some Yucca backers say. Berkley called on Bush to stand behind a comment he made at a September campaign stop in Nevada that "the best science must prevail" at the Yucca site.

"If you are to follow through on your campaign promises, then the EPA must set the standards," Berkley wrote. Berkley wrote that the NRC "has lost the trust and faith of the people of Nevada in its irrational determination to approve the Yucca Mountain project."

Nevada's bipartisan delegation is united on the issue. Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., has said he has "every confidence" that the Bush administration ultimately will back the EPA standards, and Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., has made similar statements. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., also has discussed the issue in person with Whitman.