Monday, Nov. 21, 2005 | 7:45 a.m.
WASHINGTON -- By the end of today, the Environmental Protection Agency will add its last pages to the stack of public comments on the proposed radiation protection standards for the Yucca Mountain project.
Today marks the end of an almost four-month comment period on the standards, proposed in August. The agency has to create a new standard after a federal appeals court threw out the existing ones last year.
The EPA received at least 120 written comments, according to its Web site.
As expected, those who support and oppose the standard expressed their thoughts, although those against it have different stances on what is wrong with it.
The agency proposed a two-tiered standard. One tier maintains a 15-millirem standard for up to 10,000 years and the second limits exposure to 350-millirem per year for 10,000 to 1 million years for those living in a certain area around Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Yucca critics, including state officials, strongly oppose the standard for a number of reasons. They claim the proposed rules do not satisfy what the court ordered last July, do not protect health and safety of future Nevadans and is written in a way to automatically let the mountain "pass."
But some opposed the standard because of the 1 million year time frame, saying it was ridiculous to try to regulate something that far into the future.
"I find the extension of the time frame for the Yucca Mountain rules to 1 million years to be absolutely preposterous," wrote Frank A. Albini, a retired research professor of mechanical engineering at Montana State University, Bozeman.
"The rules should apply no longer than the current life of the nation, about 200 years. By then, the people of the U.S., if such still exists, will probably not even be able to read, much less interpret, the rules. This is silliness in the extreme."
Others rejected the Yucca Mountain project outright, with some suggesting their own alternatives for storing nuclear waste, including creating "atomic batteries" that future generations could use to generate electricity or putting waste in steel containers wrapped in concrete with a sign in several languages saying to not go inside the mountain.
Some used the opportunity to urge the completion of the project and get waste there as fast as possible.
Other excerpts from comments submitted include:
* "Are you seriously insane!?" said someone identified only as Jeremiah. "Quit laughing. Look at the real data. Quit dismissing it. And do your damn jobs. Your current proposal is dangerous and ludicrous. That anyone could propose it with a straight face is hideous and offensive in the extreme."
* "10,000 years is a convenient threshold regardless of what the NAS (National Academy of Sciences) or Nevada has to say," wrote K. Halac.
"NAS and Nevada are entitled to an opinion. ... But rational decisions should be made by the EPA, even if they are not directly in line with the hypothetical arguments. Nevada is crying foul solely to stop construction of Yucca. Shall we allow one state out of fifty to drive public policy on this issue? While the wheels of motion are stopped by lawyers (making over $500 per hour each) to ponder time frames of 10,000 years-plus, the other 49 states in the union are concerned about the next 10 to 20 years of public health and safety."
In a second, separate comment, Halac added: "I personally would much rather have a very large radiological event in the Nevada location rather than a smaller radiological event at Indian Point in New York."
* "The EPA appears to be pandering to the needs of the Department of Energy (DOE) and nuclear industry by tailoring this proposed radiation exposure standard to fit the Yucca Mountain site so that it could be licensed," wrote R. Kaplan.
Comments submitted by Friday ranged from barely legible handwritten pages to quick e-mails to carefully-worded typed documents. A few contained profanity. And some included warnings on what would happen if Yucca opened, while others warned what would happen if it did not open.
It is not clear when the agency will finish reviewing the comments and issue its final rule.
The last time the agency proposed a radiation standard, it took two years to take public comment, respond and make the final standard public.
Suzanne Struglinski can be reached at (202) 662-7245 or at [email protected].
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