White House considering Yucca limit for radiation

Benjamin Grove

Friday, May 18, 2001 | 10:59 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration is still mulling a controversial radiation release limit standard for the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, three state officials said Thursday.

But a decision is "imminent," Bush aides told Gov. Kenny Guinn's chief-of-staff, Marybel Batjer, she said Thursday.

Guinn dispatched Batjer, state Yucca watchdog Bob Loux and lobbyist Mike Pieper to meet with White House officials. At the 45-minute meeting were eight Bush aides, including officials from the president's Office of Management and Budget and the Environmental Protection Agency.

At issue is Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, the only site under consideration for the nation's nuclear waste burial ground.

Guinn sent his aides to deliver a strong message that people in Nevada support a proposal by the EPA that would limit radiation release from waste stored at Yucca Mountain to 15 millirems, with a 4 millirems standard for ground water. A chest X-ray is roughly 5 millirems.

That limit is so strict it could be impossible to meet and threatens the project, which is one reason why Nevada officials like it.

Officials with the EPA, project managers with the Energy Department, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have been involved in private meetings on whether to make the standard official -- or to consider a less strict standard. NRC officials support a less strict standard.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., has said the NRC has been inappropriately pressuring the EPA to set a less strict standard.

"I tried to put a human face on the problem," Batjer said. "People need to understand that the aquifer that this ground water standard would apply to is already used by humans in the Amargosa Valley." That's the valley downstream from Yucca that is home to dairy farms.

White House officials would not say if they were preparing to adopt the proposed EPA standard or another one, the Nevadans said after the meeting. The officials asked pointed questions about whether Las Vegas' population was spreading toward Yucca. The Nevadans replied that was the direction of growth in Clark County, Loux said.

Meanwhile Thursday aides to Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., said he had received an e-mail from a senior White House official confirming that President Bush is committed to letting the EPA set the standard. The EPA has that authority under the law.

Gibbons also has stressed to Bush officials that Nevadans back the EPA standard as proposed.

Pieper said Guinn is preparing to pursue "every legal and political path he can" to block the Yucca plan.

The radiation standards could be grounds for a lawsuit, said Loux, director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects.

"We'll get ready to sue if things don't go our way," Loux said.