EPA Proposes Radiation Exposure Limits

By H. JOSEF HEBERT, Associated Press Writer
09 August, 2005; 22 minutes ago
The Environmental Protection Agency, trying to overcome a court ruling that threatens a proposed nuclear waste dump in Nevada, is proposing new radiation exposure limits for the project aimed at protecting the public for up to 1 million years, agency officials said Tuesday.

The proposed new standard is intended to satisfy a court decision a year ago that said the EPA's initial requirements were inadequate. The ruling threatened to cripple the project at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, unless the EPA developed new rules.

The proposal was discussed by government officials speaking on condition of anonymity because the decision was being announced by the agency later Tuesday.

Yucca Mountain is planned as a national repository for spent commercial reactor fuel and high-level defense waste. The opening date has been repeatedly delayed and is now expected in 2012 or later.

The EPA proposal, which would become final after a public comment period, will establish a two-tier standard that limits the level of radiation exposure to the public from the waste dump � one for a period of up to 10,000 years and another for well beyond that to as long as 1 million years, the officials told The Associated Press.

A federal appeals court in July, 2004, said that the EPA had violated the direction from Congress when it had earlier limited its exposure standards to 10,000 years. A National Academy of Sciences report had said such a standard should target the periods of greatest radiation levels from the waste, a period well beyond 10,000 years.

Under the revised standard, a person near the site must be exposed to no more than an additional 15 millirems of radiation over a year up until 10,000 years as a result of radiation leaking from the buried waste through groundwater or other sources, according to EPA officials.

After 10,000 years the exposure limit is increased to 350 millirem per year.

It also requires that the maximum radiation from the dump be at a level that assures people living near the site over a lifetime "not receive total radiation any higher than natural levels people currently live with in other areas of the country," according to a fact sheet prepared by the EPA.

Annual radiation from natural sources varies widely depending on elevation and other factors, but averages about 300 millirems a year, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The Yucca Mountain waste site is being designed to accept highly radioactive used reactor fuel from commercial nuclear power plants around the country as well as some defense waste. The government had hoped to open the underground site by 2010, but that timetable has slipped to 2012 or possibly later.

President Bush gave the project the go-ahead in 2002, despite strong opposition from Nevada officials. But the project has been plagued by a series of problems since then, from budget shortfalls to a demand by the court to rework the radiation standards.

Craig Stevens, a spokesman for the Energy Department, said the administration is firmly committed to pushing ahead with the Yucca project.

"This is a standard that we can certainly meet," said Stevens, when told of the EPA's two-tier approach.

The Energy Department hopes to submit a formal application for a license for Yucca Mountain with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission early next year, although Stevens said the department was not setting a date.

The NRC must issue both a construction and operating license for the site. Nevada officials have vowed to fight the project before the NRC.

The nuclear industry has pushed for a central repository for reactor waste, arguing that the government promised such a site be available. Currently there are some 50,000 tons of reactor waste � in the form of spent fuel rods � at commercial reactors in 31 states.

Yucca Mountain Papers May Have Been False
9:30 p.m. 16 March 2005
By H. JOSEF HEBERT, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Government employees may have falsified documents related to the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project in Nevada, the Energy Department said Wednesday. The disclosure could jeopardize the project's ability to get a federal permit to operate the dump.

During preparation for a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the department said it found a number of e-mails from 1998 through 2000 in which an employee of the U.S. Geological Survey "indicated that he had fabricated documentation of his work."

Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said the department is investigating what kind of information was falsified and whether it would affect the scientific underpinnings of the project.

"If in the course of that review any work is found to be deficient, it will be replaced or supplemented with analysis and documents that meet appropriate quality assurance standards," said Bodman. He said he was "greatly disturbed" by the development.

The department said the questionable data involved computer modeling for water infiltration and climate at the Yucca site, which is 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

At a House hearing Wednesday, the official who recently took over the Yucca program in the Energy Department indicated that the revelations could further delay the project.

"I assure you we will not proceed until we have rectified these problems," Theodore Garrish told Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that controls the dollars for Yucca Mountain.

Garrish was not asked to elaborate. After the hearing, he declined to answer reporters' questions.

Hobson said the problem did not appear too serious and that he did not think it would throw Yucca Mountain off track.

"As I understand it this is not a major impediment and can be corrected very easily," Hobson told reporters. "Some people just don't want to do their job right, so they'll slip it through rather than doing their job. We don't have any evidence that somebody directed anybody to do this."

Chip Groat, director of the Geological Survey, said the e-mails "have raised serious questions about the review process of scientific studies done six years ago."

The disclosure follows other setbacks for the proposed waste dump. The department has delayed filing its license application to nuclear regulators and now acknowledges that the planned completion of the facility by 2010 no longer is possible. Garrish told the committee Wednesday that he couldn't provide a new completion date.

Congress last year refused to provide all the money sought by the Bush administration for the project. A federal appeals court rejected the radiation protection standards established by the Environmental Protection Agency; the agency is developing new standards.

Last month, the official in charge of the Yucca project resigned, citing personal reasons.

The discovery of the e-mails "really casts the project in a real bad light. In lieu of the other problems, it might be the one that pushes it over the edge to cancellation," said Bob Loux, Nevada state Nuclear Projects director and Gov. Kenny Guinn's chief anti-Yucca administrator.

Loux said potential water transport � the issue that some of the questionable work apparently involved � is critical for the proposed waste repository.

Water is "the key mechanism at Yucca Mountain both in terms of infiltrating into the site and in terms of letting radioactivity release into the biosphere," Loux said.

Word that documents may have been falsified "certainly calls into question DOE's ability to submit any kind of a license application in the near term," Loux said.

In a statement, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the development "proves once again that DOE must cheat and lie in order to make Yucca Mountain look safe."

Bodman said the questionable documents were part of the papers required by the NRC to verify the accuracy of earlier work in the project.

"The fact remains that this country needs a permanent geological nuclear waste repository, and the administration will continue to aggressively pursue that goal," Bodman said. He said that "all related decisions have been, and will continue to be, based on sound science."
Associated Press writer Erica Werner contributed to this report.

U.S. DISTRICT COURT HANDS NEVADA MAJOR VICTORY

D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Rules Yucca Mountain Regulations Not Safe

09 July 2004

WASHINGTON, D.C. - In a decision handed down today, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the people of Nevada in an argument to stop the Yucca Mountain project. The state of Nevada sued the Department of Energy claiming a proposed nuclear waste repository would not be safe. The court decided that federal regulations are not stringent enough to protect the public from the significant risks associated with nuclear waste.

Nevada's Senators Harry Reid and John Ensign released the following statements today:

"Nevadans have won a huge victory today," Senator Reid said. "I�ve never believed Yucca Mountain would open, and today it could not be more clear that�s true. The court�s ruling is a significant blow to the Department of Energy and the Yucca Mountain project and I believe enough to effectively kill the project. There is a reason we have fought this project for more than two decades. It is impossible to open this kind of nuclear waste repository and still guarantee the health and safety of Nevadans."

"Today�s court ruling provides Nevada a crucial legal tool to defeat the Yucca Mountain project once and for all," Sen. Ensign said. "Our state�s legal team should be congratulated for this victory against all those forces that would like to turn Nevada into the country�s nuclear dumping ground. Our united effort, in which Nevadans of all political affiliations joined, is the reason for this victory and our celebration today."

Contact Senator Reid's Press Secretary, at [email protected] for further information and details.

Investigation Urged of Yucca Mountain Nuclear Dump Study

Back to Hotsheets
Supporters of Yucca Mountain Nuclear Repository again remind fellow legislators and the public how 'clean', 'inexpensive', and 'safe' is nuclear energy. It now has been less than 50 years since the first nuclear electric power plants were created in California during the 1950's and located at Santa Susana and Downey, California. To date, 09 July, 2002, only 20% of power used in the United States is sourced from nuclear power plants. As of today, $7 billion dollars has already been spent studying and planning the nuclear repository to be located at Yucca Valley, Nevada with another $50 billion dollars estimated for this repository's costs by the year 2010. The highly radioactive wastes will remain lethal for tens of thousands of years. Legislators approving and authorizing this repositoy site today state that the Yucca Vallley Nuclear Repository is necessary to house existing nuclear wastes now stored at sites located within the states which produce and supply nuclear power.

Supportive legislators of the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Repository stated today that if the Nevada repository is not approved and used for radioactive wastes that the country will have to stop it's production of nuclear power. The United States managed to provide its power supplies before the creation and use of nuclear power plants to provide power; only 20% of our power comes from these power plants unless the figures are intentionally misleading and the figures are the result of fraud and deceit and there are many ALTERNATIVE sources of electrical power. It is apparent that nuclear power is NOT 'safe' as its waste products must be stored far away from the public for many thousands of years. It is also apparent that nuclear power is NOT 'clean' as its wastes are lethal and carcinogenic for tens of thousands of years and must be stored far away from the public for thousands of centuries into the future. It is most obvious that nuclear power is NOT an efficient, safe, clean, and INEXPENSIVE electrical power source as so far, the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Repository has cost taxpayers $4.5 billion dollars in the last studies alone and another $50 billion in its anticipated costs until the year 2010 which is a mere eight years from today. As approved by the US Senate, the Yucca Valley Nuclear Repository WILL NOT be able to store all of TODAY'S highly radioactive wastes.

Since there has already been created 50 years of nuclear materials which must be stored at Yucca Valley in the near future, and this respository will not be able to store all of today's nuclear wastes, and must store these lethal, carcinogenic wastes for thousands of years into the future, it is clear that if the United States continues to use nuclear generated power of which there is no place to store it for the future centuries, it is important that we agree with Yucca Valley supporters in that the United States must stop producing and using nuclear power because it is lethal, dangerous, expensive, and filthy with carcinogens, fraud, and deceit. Write your Senators and US Representatives now regarding the weaning of America from nuclear power sources and let your legislators know how filthy is this source of energy, and how expensive and dangerous it is to create, use, and store.

Nuclear Waste Shipment Through California Is Scuttled
From Associated Press
10 July, 2003
A plan to ship nuclear waste from Nevada to New Mexico through Southern California was canceled Wednesday because of opposition from California officials, the U.S. Department of Energy said.
It marked the first time shipment plans had been halted because of a state's resistance, Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis said. There were no immediate plans to reschedule the truck shipments of medium-level waste on the circuitous 300-mile route through California. The shipments were to have started as early as today.
"The waste that we ship to New Mexico for storage, we have never had a state that I'm aware of not agree to let us use a route," Davis said. "This sets a very dangerous precedent for the future of radioactive waste shipments."
He said much of the waste that would have been shipped originated in California before it was moved to Nevada.
The Energy Department did not indicate how much waste would have been trucked, or exactly when the shipments would have occurred.
The department's decision came after the Western Governors' Assn. notified the agency that California did not concur on the route. The agency's protocol is to get a state's agreement before shipping, Davis said.
"This is not a delay," he said. "We're canceling the shipments until the Western Governors' Assn. and the state of California and state of Nevada can engage together and propose a meaningful compromise."
The chief objection was the roundabout route from Nevada through California and Arizona to a disposal facility in New Mexico. Part of the trip was to have been along California 127, a road that authorities said is not designed for heavy trucks, is poorly maintained in places and is popular with tourists heading to Death Valley.
California Highway Patrol spokesman Tom Marshall said the agency didn't necessarily object to moving low-grade material through the state, but didn't want the state to become the primary route for shipping higher-grade material.
The dispute could be a run-up to a larger fight over highly radioactive material that is supposed to be transported from nuclear power plants to the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump in Nevada, which could open as early as 2010.

Madeline Felkins Rocketdyne/Boeing HOTSHEETS News Felkins ANTHOLOGY and HOTSHEETS *Copyright Madeline L. Felkins 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 All Rights