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No one
knows what the Earth will be like in a million years.
But a proposed nuclear waste dump in Nevada must be
designed to ensure that people living near it then are
exposed to no more than 100 millirems of radiation
annually—equivalent to about a half-dozen x-rays.
And over
the next 10,000 years, radiation exposure to the waste
dump’s neighbors may be no more than 15 millirems a
year, which is about what people get from an ordinary
x-ray. People receive about 350 millirems a year of
radiation on average from all background sources.
After
three years of deliberations, the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) on Tuesday announced its
radiation health standard for the proposed Yucca
Mountain nuclear waste repository, a proposed system of
underground caverns 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas,
where the government hopes to keep highly radioactive
commercial and military nuclear waste.
It is
scheduled to open in 2020 if a license application is
approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
The EPA
has struggled to comply with a 2004 court directive that
said it must establish a radiation health standard for a
million years into the future because some of the
isotopes in the buried waste will remain extremely
dangerous for that long. An earlier standard of only
10,000 years was ruled inadequate by the court.
The
agency said on Tuesday it believes its latest standard
is “consistent” with the recommendations of the National
Academy of Sciences and is expected to satisfy the court
decision.
The
Energy Department in June submitted its license request
for the Yucca Mountain dump to the NRC, which has three
years to consider the request. Despite strong opposition
from Nevada officials, the Bush administration hopes the
site can be opened by 2020.
It is
designed to hold 77,700 tons of used reactor fuel from
commercial nuclear power plants in 31 states. The Energy
Department recently estimated a cost of $96.2 billion of
building and operating it for 150 years, beyond its
expected closure date of 2113.
The EPA
said that in submitting its design for a license, the
Energy Department must consider the effects of climate
change, earthquakes and volcanic activities, as well as
the corrosion of the waste packages to assure it can
meet the radiation exposure requirements over a million
years.
Energy
Secretary Samuel Bodman has said he is confident that
the license application submitted to the NRC will “stand
up to any challenges anywhere,” including questions
about whether the design will be adequate to meet the
EPA’s radiation exposure standard to nearby residents.
Rep. Ed
Markey, D-Massachusetts, said the EPA announcement,
coming four months after the Yucca application was sent
to the NRC, “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 Energy Department should withdraw the
application and resubmit it after the radiation exposure
requirements are taken into account.
Kevin
Kamps, of the antinuclear watchdog group Beyond Nuclear,
called the 100-millirem threshold far too lax. He said
it would allow “future generations to be exposed to
significantly higher doses of harmful radiation” than
people living near nuclear power plants today.
The
NRC’s primary job will be to determine whether the
proposed design will protect public health and meet the
EPA radiation standard. The NRC has proposed a less
stringent radiation standard. And the EPA itself had a
maximum exposure of 350 millirems per year for the
10,000-to-1-million-year time frame, more than three
times the exposure level it announced Tuesday. |
