Print
E-mail
Share
iPod
del.icio.us
digg
Newsvine
FacebookYUCCA MOUNTAIN:
EPA offers a bit of comfort on cancer risk
New standards for future generations allow for fewer probable cases
Thu, Oct 2, 2008 (2 a.m.)
Reader poll
Sun Topics
What is often lost in the debate over Yucca Mountain is that what we’re really talking about is cancer.
How much cancer risk should future Nevadans be exposed to if federal government’s nuclear waste repository is built in the desert 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas?
The answer came this week: 1 in 125.
One in every 125 future residents living near Yucca Mountain’s deadly nuclear waste can expect to be at risk of getting cancer.
One in every 250 can expect to die.
The odds are better for people who would live in the area only a short time.
The new standards, interpreted by watchdog groups, were released by the Bush administration’s Environmental Protection Agency in a surprise move, more than four years after a federal district court tossed out the old ones as not protective enough of Nevadans’ health.
Many observers expected the new cancer risk standards would not be released until after the presidential election so as not to inflame an unpopular issue in the battleground state of Nevada. Most Nevadans oppose Yucca Mountain, even if it is not their top issue. John McCain, the Republican candidate, supports developing the dump; Barack Obama, the Democrat, has vowed to halt it.
Yet others believe that by releasing the new standards, the Bush administration hopes to accelerate the project before leaving office. The Energy Department reached a major milestone this summer by submitting the dump’s application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for approval. Had the cancer standards been released before that, Nevada would have likely sued again and potentially delayed the submittal.
Sen. Harry Reid, the majority leader, said, “There is no way this weak standard will breathe life into the Bush-McCain plan to dump nuclear waste in Nevada.” He and Republican Sen. John Ensign vowed to continue fighting it.
A nuclear watchdog group, the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, called for an independent investigation into whether the Energy Department can realistically meet the new standards.
The Democratic chairman of a House environmental committee, Rep. Edward Markey of Massachusetts, said the government should withdraw the project’s application and start over once the Energy Department proves it can protect Nevadans’ health.
The Bush administration’s release of the new risk standard “only reinforces how their entire approach to the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project has put politics and the financial health of the nuclear industry ahead of science and the health of the public,” Markey said.
The cancer risk wouldn’t start immediately. That’s what makes talking about cancer at Yucca Mountain tricky. The conversation immediately fast-forwards to the never-never land of planning a facility that will be around for 1 million years.
At first, the risk will be much smaller. For the first 10,000 years, just one in every 1,000 people living in the desert around Yucca Mountain would be at risk of getting cancer. That’s about as much danger as the Environmental Protection Agency allows at other sites with nuclear contamination. Some even have a higher risk.
But what has always tripped up Yucca Mountain planners is what happens in the far-off future, the post-10,000-year time frame, as the waste sits in the mountain for the next million years.
Who knows? Maybe there will be a cure for cancer by then.
But those future years are when the biggest potential risk for exposure occurs. If the containers holding the nuclear fuel begin to corrode, waste could spread into ground water used for drinking and irrigation.
The Energy Department says its models show very little waste will escape — just a small fraction of what the new standards allow. Watchdogs are skeptical.
Still, the new cancer risk standard is an improvement, all sides agree. The original would have allowed as many as 1 in 70 future residents to die of cancer. The court said no way.
But putting 1 in 125 residents at risk of cancer in the far-out future is still more than the government allows at its other nuclear-contaminated sites, said Daniel Hirsch, a longtime anti-nuclear activist who teaches at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Hirsch likes to say the EPA’s approach is like falling off the Empire State Building: The first 50 floors are fine. But the last few are the killers.
The Environmental Protection Agency said the new standard “protects public health and safety for one million years.”
The agency assumes less risk by estimating residents live near the site for only 30 years, rather than 70 years, as watchdogs calculate.
“Developing a standard that will apply for 25,000 generations is unprecedented,” the agency said. “In meeting this challenge, we followed international guidance and applied our best scientific judgment.”
The new standards come at a pivotal time as Nevada’s point man fighting the project, Bob Loux, the director of the state agency for nuclear projects, resigned this week after Gov. Jim Gibbons called for his ouster following Loux’s role in a pay-raise scandal.
Some experts say there may be no one else in the country with the expertise and experience to run the office Loux has headed since its inception 25 years ago.
And the pro-Yucca forces see Loux’s departure as a chance to reconsider the potential economic benefits of hosting a waste dump.
Loux, who will remain on the job until his successor is appointed, said Wednesday the state is reviewing whether it will again sue the government for stricter standards.
Hirsch is a believer in the concept of generational ethics — that this generation has a responsibility not to saddle the next with contamination, which he says the Bush administration would allow at Yucca Mountain.
“For purely political reasons, to try to help get an unsafe project approved, they have overridden the science — and the ethics — of creating so many cancers in people not even born yet,” he said.
Discussion: 8 comments so far…
Post a comment
- Most Read
- Discussed
- Most E-mailed
- Economy poses test for The Strip’s big night
- State recommends 18 years for Simpson
- Chief who set new course for LVAM is out, suddenly
- Henderson to offer buyouts to city employees; layoffs possible
- Weighty issues solved: De La Hoya, Pacquiao ready
- Historic night on tap for Mexican/American MMA fighters
- Builder sees green light in red-flag economy
- What Gibbons would say to Obama
- Harrah’s vice chairman stepping down
- A recession-proof fight? Promoter thinks so
Blogs
Politics: The Early Line
Mining industry asked to pre-pay tax in budget deal
Now and Then
Traffic school film a blast from the past
Sports: UNLV
UNLV to host seven football recruits this weekend
Joe Brown
Vegas hometown boy Ne-Yo gets 4 Grammy nominations
Year-end list of year-end lists
Politics: The Early Line
Director: Yucca nuke dump an 'extreme stretch'
Culture and Entertainment
Top country acts to perform at NFR in Las Vegas
Bloggity, Bloggity, Bloggity
Sprint Cup racing should be affordable entertainment (13 Comments)
Calendar
- National Finals Rodeo at the Thomas and Mack Center (9 a.m. to 10 p.m.)
- Captain Bree, Scourge of the Seaat Green Valley Christian Center (6 p.m. to 8 p.m.)
- Blues Storm at the Sand Dollar Lounge (9:30 p.m. to 11:59 p.m.)
- Tracy Letts' Bug at The Onyx Theater (7 p.m. to 10 p.m.)
-
The Sun
Locally owned and independent for more than 50 years.
Unsaid in Lisa Mascaro's argument is the strong generational health benefit of nuclear power in reducing globe warming. Millions of people stand to live, and live a better life, if greenhouse gases are eliminated.
Lisa has again chosen (in the absence of Crooked lobbyist Bob Loux)to get her fact from interpretations by fear-mongering watchdog groups (Nuclear watchdog groups like the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research).
The standard itself is normal, reasonable and well below comparable requirements across the U.S.
Setting the radiation level at 15 millirems -- about equivalent to an X-ray -- a year for the first 10,000 years of the project, is consistent with long standing public policy.
The fact is that there are no theoretical farmers living 24/7 on the remote site boundary fencepost 11 miles south of the Yucca site at Amargosa Valley that actual could uptake the dose.
Lisa and fear-mongering watchdog groups, would have you believe that 125 people are sitting around 24/7 on the fence post at this remote high desert location, living off of Yucca plant roots, and that that one of them will die 5000 years from now.
Daniel Hirsch is a believer in the concept of generational ethics -- that this generation has a responsibility not to saddle the next generation. This is exactly why we need to remove the naval waste, Defense Waste and Commercial spent fuel from 100's of location to one secure location, and promote greenhouse gas elimination.
The fear-mongering LV Sun cannot understand that the acceptance criteria is less than a plane ride. Have Barbara Greenspun, or Brian Greenspun, Lisa Mascaro, Micheal Kelly, or Micheal Campell gotten an x-ray or taken a plane ride this year.
As usual, failure to put in perspective.
Near? How far is near? This 1 in 125 applies to a hypothetical person living at a worst case point on the map that is 11 miles due south of the repository. Care to guess how many residents there are at that location? Amargosa Valley is the closest "town" and has a population of less than 1000, none of which reside at this worst case point on a map.
This 1 in 125 does not apply to Nevada, it doesn't apply to Las Vegas, it doesn't apply to Clark County, it doesn't apply to Pahrump, it applies only to a very specific point on a map. Move 10 miles away from that point and the risk of additional cancer statistically disappears.
What is the risk of this hypothetical person dying from cancer without Yucca Mountain? 29 in 125. So, the increased risk of dying from cancer caused by Yucca Mountain is 3 percent. But again, this only applies to this hypothetical person, not to anyone living in Las Vegas!
Is there are risk? Yes, there is. There are risks in everything we do. We need to judge whether it is an acceptable risk based on the benefit of removing all the waste scattered across the country and permanently disposing of it.
For all of those voting for no risk, do you ride in a car, walk down the street, use electricity in your home, ever be outside in an electrical storm? If so, you are submitting yourself to more risk than ANY REAL individlual will be subjected to by Yucca Mountain!
The risks are calculated on all worst case numbers for the hypotetical location where no one will probably ever live. Instead of putting the waste were it belongs, you would have it scattered around the country near real people with real risks today rather than a hypotetical risk 10,000 years in the future. You all must be INSANE!
In his rapid response press release, issued the same day as the 137 page regulation that I doubt he or anyone on his staff has read, Sen. Reid says, "The agency (EPA) decided just how much radiation you and I can live with." That is not at all what is in the regulation. Instead, the dose limits set in the regulation are for a precisely defined hypothetical individual living at a point 11 miles from the proposed repository who might consume water contaminated by radionuclides that migrate and mix with the groundwater that is accessible to him (and yes, it is a male) thousands of years from now. The dose limit is about the same as a chest x-ray for the period through 10,000 years from repository closure and for the period following through one million years the dose limit is the same as it presently is for the public anywhere in the U.S. It also is one-fifth of the limit a nuclear worker is allowed to be exposed to.
The senator is exposed to about the same level of radiation on a round-trip by plane to Washington DC as the dose limit for the first 10,000 years set in the EPA reg.
1 in 125? What a joke! Denver gets 350 mrem/yr more than Las Vegas, so this means with a limit of 100 mrem/yr in comparison that 1/3 of Denver would die from cancer each year???? Obviously, the analysis by Institute for Energy and Environmental Research is faulty!!.
But don't let reality or facts get in the way of a good story.
Time for a "Good Trade"....
Now is the time for Nevada accept Yucca if
the DOE will double Nevada's fresh water supply !
That would be a good "Good Trade" !
How many jobs and much revenue is a new million acre feet of fresh water each year worth to Nevada ? ( That's 325,900,000,000 gallons.)
The new water Source can keep Lake Mead full and producing 2000 megawatts of renewable energy every year for Nevada.
A request has already been made to the Bureau of Reclamation to lease the air space in Lake Mead for the storage of a million acre feet of non-tributary fresh water a year !
More than enough fresh water would remove the risk of drying up the desert environment and would solve the problems for Las Vegas and the SNWA !
Odds are, Yucca will eventually prevail. The point is what will Nevada get in trade ... ?
Ray Walker (Retired Water Rights Analyst) waterrdw@yahoo.com
I notice that the Sun did not consult the series of Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR) reports put out by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), a politically neutral and totally authoritative organization devoted to consensus-based scientific research.
The most recent BEIR report, in the spirit of consensus and on the basis of the overall data picture, rejects the minority "outlier" studies that support the arguments of both anti-nuclear and pro-nuclear groups, concluding that low-level ionizing radiation is neither as dangerous as the former would have us believe, nor as safe as the latter would have us believe.
BEIR establishes a basic dose/cancer relationship as follows: At exposure levels of 100 mSv (10,000 mrem) above the dose we get from background radiation annually (360 mrem), the risk of cancer is 1 in 100. In other words, for every 100 people exposed to that 10,000-mrem dose, one person will develop cancer as a result of it. (41 others in that group of 100, by the way, will develop cancer from causes unrelated to the added radiation exposure.)
So, let's assume a proportional risk relationship and look at the dose levels proposed in the EPA standard. If, at exposure levels of 10,000 mrem, the cancer risk is 1%, then the risk at exposure levels of 15 mrem is 0.0015%. That means that for every 200,000 people exposed, three people would develop cancer as a result of the added exposure. (And again, out of that 200,000 people, 82,000 people would develop cancer from causes unrelated to the added exposure.)
At the 100-mrem EPA dose standard (after 10,000 years up to a million years), the percentage of risk is 0.01%, which means that for every 10,000 people exposed, one person will develop cancer as a result of the added exposure. (And once again, out of that 10,000 people, 4,100 people would develop cancer from causes unrelated to the added exposure.)
Remember, too, that I've simplified and used a proportional relationship that doesn't exactly mesh with "real-life" epidemiology statistics or the full NAS methodology. For example, as other contributors in here have mentioned, in Denver the annual radiation dose from background sources is around 700 mrem (nearly twice the average), and yet there is apparently no higher incidence of cancer among the population.
I see no reference to the ridiculous claim that 1 in 125 people will get cancer. This is simply scare tactics (see some of the above comments, all of which are along the same line). Here are some web sites you may want to check out:
http://hps.org/documents/BEIRVIIPressRel...
https://hps.org/govtrelations/documents/...
It is really getting frustrating to be lied to. Your tactic is shameless and totally against the tenets of good journalism. Please stop defying the Nevada citizens and scare them out of their rights to receive benefits. Note that we take a far less risk from Yucca Mountain approval than simply getting in your car and driving down the road. Cancer is a serious disease and many people will contract and die of this disease and your lies simply take advantage of people who are not informed on this subject simply to inflame your ego. The public should get their facts from other sources than the Sun, but then I guess you know that already.