EPA’s proposal for new Yucca radiation standard is delayed

Suzanne Struglinski

Wednesday, May 18, 2005 | 11:01 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- A proposal for the new radiation standard for the Yucca Mountain project may not be done until September, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

In its semi-annual regulatory agenda released Monday, the agency said it will put out a notice of its proposed radiation standard by September, which is later than the earlier vague estimate of the "summer" that government officials have alluded to previously.

That could push the Energy Department's plans for the planned nuclear waste dump, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, back further.

The Energy Department may not be able to submit its license application for the proposed nuclear waste storage site until the rule is finalized, depending on what the agency proposes.

Once the proposed rule is made public, the agency will have to gather public comments, either written, through public meetings or both and evaluate them before issuing a final rule.

Attorney Joe Egan, who represents the state on Yucca Mountain issues, said based on timing, the final rule is unlikely to come out in 2005.

The EPA originally set a 10,000-year radiation standard for Yucca in 2001. Under the rule, the department would have to prove people would not be exposed to more than 15 millirems of radiation, a little more than a chest X-ray, each year for 10,000 years.

But last July the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia threw out the standard, saying it was not "based upon and consistent with" recommendations by the National Academy of Sciences.

The Energy Policy Act of 1992 required EPA to form its regulation based on the academy's findings. The academy said the protection standard should go to the peak dose of radiation, which may not come until hundreds of thousands of years into the future.

The court ordered the EPA to rework the standard, and that has posed a problem for the Energy Department, which planned on trying to prove that Yucca Mountain could hold radiation for 10,000 years.

The Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's lobbying organization and a top Yucca supporter, believes the agency can keep the 10,000-year standard in place while establishing another standard beyond that, spokesman Mitch Singer said. This would allow the Energy Department to turn in a license application, once it felt it was ready, based on information it already has and then amend it once the agency finalized a new standard.

Nevada officials are arguing that the standard should be based on when the radiation will give off its peak dose.

State officials have argued that the containers the nuclear waste is placed in will fail before 10,000 years. They say that Yucca Mountain must contain the waste when it is most deadly.

By setting the standard to peak dose, it will make sure Nevada residents are not exposed to more than 15 millirems of radiation once the containers -- or packages -- holding the waste fail, whenever that takes place, Egan said.

"We want the public to be protected," Egan said. "When the packages fail, the public is still protected."

But the state believes the project could not meet that such a peak dose standard based on its own analysis and views on scientific work done on the mountain by the department.

The agency is considering several options, including not changing the 10,000-year standard, an option that came out in a meeting with various interests, including Yucca critics in March.

In that case, the EPA would try to justify the 10,000 years in a way that would satisfy the court.

Another option is leaving the 15-millirem, 10,000-year standard in place but then allowing an increased millirem dose level after 10,000 years or just increasing the dose limit. Levels of 25 millirems or 100 millirems were used as examples in the meeting.