Editorial: Radiation standards a farce

Monday, March 6, 2006 | 7:31 a.m.

The Environmental Protection Agency last week said it can do the impossible - issue a final radiation standard for Yucca Mountain by the end of the year. We say impossible because the radiation standard, by federal court order, must protect the public for roughly 300,000 years. For that matter, the bumbling U.S. Energy Department has proven that it would be incapable of safely transporting and burying 77,000 tons of nuclear waste for any period of time.

A radiation standard sets the amount of radioactivity allowed to be emitted in any one year from Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. This is the site under study - and under construction - by the federal government as the nation's sole burial spot for high-level nuclear waste.

It is currently in limbo for a variety of scientific reasons, but mainly because of a federal court challenge by Nevada. The state argued that the EPA had set a radiation standard to protect people over a 10,000-year period, when a much longer time period was required.

When Congress approved Yucca Mountain in 1987, it ordered the EPA to rely on calculations by the National Academy of Sciences in setting the length of time for the standard. The academy said the standard should be set for the peak life of the radiation, which is about 300,000 years. The federal court found that the EPA hadn't followed Congress' direction, forcing the agency to come up with a new standard.

Radioactivity is measured in rems. Last August the EPA proposed a new standard for Yucca that would allow the emission of 15 millirems a year for 10,000 years (a chest X-ray is about 10 millirems), then 350 millirems a year for a million years beyond that. It is this proposal, or a refinement, that the EPA will release as its final recommendation by the end of the year.

Obviously, it is absurd to believe that a standard will be preserved for even 10,000 years. Cro-Magnon man lived in Southern Nevada 10,000 years ago. What our state will be that far into the future is anyone's guess. But let's say that humans are still here, and that Las Vegas has expanded to Yucca Mountain by then. The level of 350 millirems is three times higher than what is allowed to be emitted from today's nuclear plants. Maybe the EPA thinks humans will be radioactive-loving mutants by then.

Nonetheless, the absurdity of permanently burying nuclear waste continues to be discussed by federal officials - all with straight faces.