Long spans for radiation standards leave many cold

Suzanne Struglinski

Sunday, Oct. 2, 2005 | 2:09 a.m.

Public meetings

The Environmental Protection Agency will hold four public meetings on its new radiation standard this week: one in Amargosa Valley and three at Cashman Center in Las Vegas.

AMARGOSA VALLEY Monday, Oct. 3 Amargosa Valley Community Center 821 E. Farm Road Information session 4 p.m.-5:30 p.m. Roundtable dialogue 5:30 p.m.-6:30 p.m. Public hearing 7 p.m.-9 p.m.

LAS VEGAS Tuesday, Oct 4 Cashman Center 850 Las Vegas Blvd. North Information session 4 p.m.-5:30 p.m. Roundtable dialogue 5:30 p.m.- 6:30 p.m. Public hearing 7 p.m.-9 p.m.

Wednesday, Oct. 5 Cashman Center Information session 10 a.m.-11 a.m. Public hearing 11 a.m.-noon

Thursday, Oct. 6 Cashman Center Information session 10 a.m.-11 a.m. Public hearing 11 a.m.-noon

Radiation all around us

Learn about the type of radiation around you:

http://www.lasvegassun.com/pdf/rad.pdf

WASHINGTON -- The way Yucca Mountain critics see it, the Environmental Protection Agency's proposed radiation standard for the nuclear waste dump is weak -- and will be even weaker 1 million years from now.

And therein lies their problem. Because while critics see this as a life-or-death issue, they are finding it difficult to arouse the public, in part because some of what is at stake will not become an issue for more than 10,000 years.

As the EPA comes to Las Vegas this week to gather public comment on the proposed standard regulating radiation levels at nuclear waste repository, critics hope the fact that a part of the rule would not take effect until at least the year 12,310 does not prompt public disinterest.

"A lot of people just don't get it -- they look at 10,000 years and 1 million years and their eyes glaze over," said Peggy Maze Johnson of Citizen Alert, an anti-repository group. "This is about future generations."

In advance of the hearings, Yucca critics have complained that the EPA, told by a federal appellate court to rewrite its rule, simply presented a warmed-over version of the one the court threw out.

"We won a lawsuit, but there is no change" to the rule, Johnson said.

Yucca critics are not optimistic that this week's hearings will change that.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has already proposed an identical rule for its regulations, and Johnson fears critical voices will fall on deaf ears.

When she met with EPA officials while the standard was being written, "they didn't seem to take any of our suggestions to heart," Johnson said.

Elizabeth Cotsworth, EPA's Office of Radiation and Indoor Air director, told a National Academy of Sciences panel earlier this month that the proposed rule, which limits the amount of radiation someone living near Yucca Mountain can be exposed to in a single year, was appropriate for protection. She said it allowed for no more radiation exposure than that of the natural landscape in Denver.

Like the old standard, the new one allows 15 millirem of radiation a year -- about the same level of annual exposure as a person would receive in an X-ray -- starting after the repository closes and lasting for 10,000 years. But the new standard adds a regulation for 10,001 years to 1 million years that increases the allowable dose 2,300 percent to 350 millirem.

The Energy Department will use computer models to prove to the commission that it can meet the standard, and the EPA will set up monitors around Yucca Mountain.

Judy Treichel of the Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force, another anti-Yucca group, argues that the standard has nothing to do with protection, but rather was designed merely to allow the dump to be approved. The previous rule did not account for radiation beyond 10,000 years.

Treichel contends the new standard will leave future Nevadans more susceptible to cancer.

Critics also are troubled by the formula that the EPA used to create the dose recommendations. The formula calls for using an average to calculate the dosage during the repository's first 10,000 years; after that, the dosage is calculated using a median.

Writing in the publication Science and Engineering Ethics, University of Notre Dame professor Kristin Shrader-Frechette said such a standard shows that "even serious harms caused by negligence or unfairness could be sanctioned if the rate of harm was below" the average.

She used, as an example, a hypothetical release that affected 715 people in a nearby town. She said if a "baby received a fatal dose of 10,000 millirems but all other residents each received 1 millirem, the mean dose would be under 15 millirems."

While such a scenario is unlikely, it shows the folly of the rule, she said. Under the EPA standard, after 10,000 years the dosage would be calculated using the median, meaning "limits would allow nearly half of exposures to exceed any standard," Shrader-Frechette said. That means in her theoretical town, 357 people could receive fatal doses of radiation if everyone else received 350 millirems or less.

Shrader-Frechette said the EPA's rule would allow radiation at 350 millirems a year -- slightly higher than the level that naturally exists in Denver -- an amount, she said, that causes about 3 percent of fatal cancers in the United States.

She said if the EPA permitted air polluters to follow similar logic, they could save money and "increase profits at the expense of the public, but claim that victims' health risks were acceptable merely because they were no worse than what some natural event had caused."

And that, critics say, is as much of a concern in 2005 as it perhaps will be in 12,310.