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StumbleEPA issues final Yucca Mountain radiation rules
Nevada senators blast proposals as using bad science
Published Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2008 | 10:24 a.m.
Updated Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2008 | 3:23 p.m.
Sun Topics
The federal Environmental Protection Agency today issued final rules for limiting radiation standards from a proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, but reactions came from Nevada's congressional delegation and an environmental activist.
The new rules satisfy a July 2004 court decision to extend the standards to protect public health and the environment, the EPA said.
The Yucca Mountain standards are in line with international radioactive waste management approaches, although Yucca Mountain is the only site designated as a final repository for both spent nuclear fuel and Defense Department nuclear wastes from the Cold War.
The EPA said it retained the dose limit of 15 millirem per year for the first 10,000 years after nuclear waste is disposed.
The agency established a dose limit of 100 millirem for annual exposure per year between 10,000 years and 1 million years.
It also requires the Energy Department to consider effects of climate change, earthquakes, volcanoes and corrosion of the waste packages buried in the mountain to safely contain radiation during the 1-million-year period.
The agency also ordered the Energy Department to be consistent with National Academy of Sciences standards for Yucca Mountain at peak dose up to 1 million years after disposal.
Nevada's two senators blasted the proposed rules for radiation protection as a decision based on flawed science that will put millions of Nevadans at risk.
"Instead of working to protect the health and safety of Nevadans, EPA and DOE (Department of Energy) are casting science aside in an attempt to get the nuclear waste dump approved," said Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and the Senate majority leader.
"Instead of warring against science, I side with Nevadans and experts who support safe and attainable solutions to our nation's nuclear waste," Reid said. " That is why I am working with Senator Ensign to keep nuclear waste on-site at the power plants where it is produced in secure dry cask storage containers that are approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. This plan is safer, more cost-effective, and will give us at least a century to find a more permanent solution to nuclear waste."
Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said he will work with Reid in a bipartisan manner to push for a new direction in nuclear waste storage and away from a Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.
"The risks associated with Yucca Mountain are no secret," Ensign said. "Yet the EPA has decided to disregard science and the health and safety of Nevadans to push this nuclear waste dump further into action. Instead of trying to dismiss the risks of Yucca Mountain, our country should be moving towards safe on-site nuclear waste storage."
Bob Loux, the former director of the Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency said his staff had not had time to do a thorough analysis, but the 100 millirem dose for annual exposure per year between 10,000 years and 1 million years is a three-fold reduction in radiation exposure.
Loux resigned Monday before the Nevada Nuclear Projects Commission.
The previous EPA rule set the dose at 350 millirems, Loux said.
The 100 millirem dose limit roughly equals radiation from five chest X-rays.
The average annual radiation exposure from both naturally occurring radiation such as radon and ultraviolet radiation from the sun and other sources such as X-rays is 360 millirems a year, the EPA said.
Kevin Kamps of Beyond Nuclear said the move shows how politicized the issue has become as the Bush administration attempts to push the Yucca Mountain project along a month before the Nov. 4 elections.
"EPA's final Yucca radiation release regulations are unacceptable," Kamps said. "All human generations are of equal importance and moral worth. Generations living 10,000 years from now are as important as current generations, yet EPA would allow them to suffer six to seven times more harmful, cancer-causing radioactivity doses than allowed for current generations.
"EPA's statement tries to downplay the harm its proposed 100 millirems per year radiation doses at Yucca would cause by station that we currently average 360 millirems per year of exposure from natural and artificial radioactivity," Kamps said. "What EPA fails to mention is our current exposure to 360 millirems of radiation kills many thousands of Americans each year with fatal cancer."
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One more of the state's so called major scientific issues with the Repository is put to rest. 100 millirem won't stop the license application from being approved.
What is the next non-issue will that will come out of former bob's team of clowns?
So it's still dead, Dingy Harry? No, they're going ahead with it. And it's time for Nevada to get whatever it can out of hosting the site. How about a billion a year? Just happens to match our budget shortfall this year.....
Reid's reaction raises just one question: what sort of standard would Reid have been happy with? The calculations show the dose will fall well below the 100 millirem! Would 50 millirem have been low enough? Well, the calculations show the dose will fall below 50 millirem. How about 15 millirem? Huh, how about that Harry? Well now, the calculations show the dose will fall below 15 millirem also!
The bottom line it is easier for Harry to just blast the EPA for establishing an unsafe standard without trying to explain what sort of standard Harry would find safe. Why doesn't he express a standard? Because that isn't his issue! It is all about stopping the repository REGARDLESS OF THE SAFETY! This is the same reason his draft dodging, english major, hippy wanabee, thiefing crook, Bobby Loux and his team never come out with scientific facts - fear mongering headlines without scientific substantiation is their chosen path, always has been and always will be.
It is about time that the EPA put this standard out.
As pointed out by many others, the acceptable Yucca dose is very low, and more than consistent WRT other sources.
Plus the fact that there are no theoretical farmers living 24/7 on the fence post 11 miles south of the Yucca site at Amargosa Valley that actual could uptake the dose.
What's even more absurd about the reaction from the anti-nuke establisment is their hysteria over natural radiation and their inclusion of it in the argument over the repository.
Kevin Kamps wails and moans about the "danger" of natural background radiation that we all receive to the tune of 360 mrem per year (residents of Denver, by the way, receive about 700 mrem per year).
What is Kamps going to do, ask EPA to set limits on sunshine and cosmic rays???
Here's the deal, folks. Studies by health physicists demonstrate that there is no abnormal rate of cancer among residents of Denver, who receive twice the average annual dose of background radiation (700 mrem).
Now, radiation is radiation, no matter what the source, man-made or natural. All that matters is the dose.
So if the EPA is proposing limits that add 15 mrem to the national average (i.e., 375 mrem) for the first 10,000 years, and 100 mrem thereafter, you still only have a maximum dose of 475 mrem annually -- and that is only for people who are close enough to the repository, over a long enough period of time, to receive such a dose.
Even in the worst case scenario, it would be 225 mrem less than the dose you would get simply from living in Denver.
And again I say to anti-nuke kooks such as Kevin Kamps, where is your outrage and advocacy when faced with the dangerous increase in exposure to radon gas or the high doses administered under nuclear medicine? If radiation at the levels we're discussing is truly that alarming, that dangerous, why isn't Kamps out trying to protect those of us who get 1,200 mrem each time we receive a CT scan, or 2,600 mrem each time we get an abdominal-pelvic CAT scan?
And here are a few other things that make my blood boil whenever these political clowns, these legislative lilliputians, start spouting off about allegedly "unsound science."
How can Reid and Ensign squawk and blather about the "flawed science" behind the EPA's radiation standard when that science comes from the thoroughly independent National Academy of Sciences? When the State took the EPA to court over the first set of standards (which only covered a period of the first 10,000 years of repository operation), the court sided with the State on one item: the claim that the EPA standard should conform to standards set by the National Academy of Sciences, which extend the time period to as much as a million years.
At that time, the State applauded the court's decision and fully accepted its basis: that the EPA should design its standard to conform to recommendations from an independent scientific oversight organization.
Well, the EPA has done that. The standards conform to the National Academy of Sciences recommendations both with respect to time period and dose limits.
And another thing: the EPA rules don't "require" that the DOE consider climate change, siesmic activity, volcanic activity, and so forth. Those things are already a part of the repository's total system performance assessment, as required by the NRC. The EPA rules merely echo those requirements, and DOE has been studying such issues for years. There are thousands upon thousands of pages devoted to studying the effects of climate change, seismic activity, volcanic activity, corrosion, and so forth.
Readers should not infer that the EPA suddenly suggested that these issues need to be studied, as if they haven't already been the subject of intense scrutiny by the Yucca Mountain Project for decades.
I think the one thing the EPA's standard, and everyone else, is lacking is a matter of perspective. What is 100 millirems (mrem) and what does it mean to me? Here are some facts...
I certainly hope that no one's sleeping with anyone, because that will up your radiation dose by one mrem. Lead jammies, anyone? Likewise, put down that banana and glass of orange juice!!! They're deadly, upping your radiation dose by 2.4 mrem from naturally occurring potassium-40, (http://www.oystercreeklr.com/pdf/Cesium%...) which has a half life of 1.4 BILLION years, much longer than that of uranium or plutonium. And for God's sake, stay away from smoke detectors!!!!! The americium-241 inside can raise that dose even higher, another 10 mrem each and every year. (http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jun/lif...) And, I hope no one smokes as that would result in upping your annual dose by 2,000 mrem/year!!! We've now moved out of the realm of the mrem and into that of the rem. Remember, 1000 mrem make up a rem.
According to Nave and Nave (http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/Hba...), there is no observable effect on the human body when absorbing 0-25 rem/year. That's why the federal standard for workers is set at five rem/year.
With this in somewhat of a more applicable format, does 100 mrem seem all that scary? Not to me, considering my house has five smoke detectors, I drink orange juice every morning. What frightens me more, are those that follow the herd like a mindless sheep and who refuse to do their own research on such an important aspect of our nation's energy matrix. People like Loux and Reid feed on ignorance when it comes to Yucca. Then again, some people can't be confused with the facts, because they've already made up their minds. Pity....