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U.S. EPA PROPOSES CARCINOGENIC YUCCA REGULATIONS

Nuclear Monitor Issue: 
#635-636
14/10/2005
Article

(October 14, 2005) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has sunk to a new low with recently proposed revisions to its Yucca Mountain, Nevada high-level radioactive waste (HLRW) dump regulations.

(635-636.5720) NIRS - On July 9, 2004, the State of Nevada and a coalition of environmental organizations, including NIRS/WISE, won a major legal victory (see WISE/NIRS Nuclear Monitor 614.5631, "Yucca Decision: 'Still on Track' or 'Derailed'?" July 30, 2004). The U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that EPA must re-write portions of its 2001 Yucca regulations, because its cut off of regulations at 10,000 years was not "based upon and consistent with" recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), as required by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. NAS had explicitly rejected a 10,000 year cut off as arbitrary, and recommended that "compliance with the standard be measured at the time of peak risk, whenever it occurs," and that "peak risks might occur tens to hundreds of thousands of years or even farther into the future."

The ruling was a major blow to the schedule and prospects of the dangerous proposal to bury 77,000 tons of HLRW on the earthquake fractured, sacred Western Shoshone Indian land above a major drinking water aquifer at Yucca.

In response to the court order, on August 22, 2005, the EPA published proposed revisions to the Yucca regulations (see www.epa.gov/radiation/docs/yucca/70fr49013.pdf) - the revisions are horrendous.

Dr. Arjun Makhijani of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER) - who served on an EPA advisory panel regarding HLRW repository regulations in the past - has said of the recently proposed Yucca revisions: "I consider this the worst single action that the EPA has taken on radiation issues ever since I began analyzing them almost 25 years ago." (1) Disregarding all applicable, long-established laws, regulations, and inter-generational morality, the EPA has proposed - as Dr. Makhijani of IEER dubs it - a "double-standard standard."

EPA's proposal would, for the first 10,000 years post-burial of wastes, retain its original Yucca regulations, allowing a 15 millirem per year (mrem/yr) radiation dose from all pathways. This would amount to a lifetime risk of cancer for 1 in 835 people exposed to Yucca's leaking radioactivity, calculated according to the recent findings presented in the National Academy of Sciences Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation report, "BEIR VII" (see WISE/NIRS Nuclear Monitor 632.5701, "U.S. Radiation Panel: No Radiation Dose Safe," July 15, 2005). But, after 10,000 years, EPA now proposes allowing a 23-fold increase in "allowable" radiation doses to 350 mrem/yr, equivalent to 58 chest x-rays per year (2), which would cause a 1 in 36 lifetime cancer rate. About half of those cancers would be fatal. EPA typically has tried to limit risk to a 1 in 10,000 or even a 1 in 1 million rate of cancer.

EPA's proposal would only apply the Safe Drinking Water Act limit of 4 mrem/yr in Yucca's groundwater for the first 10,000 years. After that, the 350 mrem/yr limit would apply to drinking water, the major pathway through which the leaking wastes would reach "dose receptors" (the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) term for people) downstream.

To make matters worse, EPA's 350-mrem/yr figure is not a maximum permitted dose to the public, but rather a median dose, meaning that 50% of doses would be higher than 350 mrem/yr - large numbers of people would, under this proposed rule, get far higher doses. EPA proposes changing from the mean dose (add all the individual doses and divide by the total number of doses to arrive at the average dose, thus including very high doses in the mean) after 10,000 years to a median dose (the middle dose value, with an equal number of dose values above and below it - meaning that very high doses are simply disregarded, no matter how high they are). According to Dr. Robert Gould, chair of the security committee of Physicians for Social Responsibility, "the sky's the limit" as to how high doses could go because, incredibly, there is no upper limit for the half of the exposures that would be above the median. (3) These higher doses would carry proportionately higher health risks.

In DOE's Yucca Total System Performance Assessment for Site Recommendation, at the time of peak dose (after the waste packages corrode and fail), the mean dose of the many computer simulations is about 600 mrem/yr, whereas the median dose is about 200 mrem/yr. Yucca would not meet standards that required the mean to be less than 350 mrem/yr, but would if the median were used. EPA's use of a 350-mrem/yr median dose limit is thus a transparent attempt to keep Yucca "licensable," despite its clearly unsuitable geology. A median of 350 mrem/yr results in doses of 2,000 mrem/yr (2 rem/yr) to the five percent of people most exposed; over a lifetime of such exposures, one in five women would contract cancer from Yucca's leaking wastes. (4)

EPA's proposed 350-mrem/yr dose would not just occur for a brief time and then decrease to far lower levels. Under EPA's proposal, these large doses would be permitted to occur year after year, generation after generation, forevermore into the future (well, out to a million years, after which time regulations would end). Under the EPA proposal - given the lack of a cap on maximum doses and the hundreds of thousands of years these leaking wastes would remain harmful - significant numbers of the people most exposed to radiation doses could suffer a statistical 100% risk of contracting cancer. (5) The State of Nevada has noted that EPA, on page 108 of the proposed rule, holds that exposures of the magnitude associated with un-mined uranium ore bodies meet the standard of "minimal justice" (explained below). EPA further states that estimates of the risks from un-mined ore bodies range upward to 100,000 excess cancer deaths over 10,000 years. So it follows that EPA believes ten excess deaths per year are acceptable. For a 1,000,000-year assessment period called for by the proposed Yucca rule, this means that ten million excess deaths would be acceptable to EPA. (6)

Dan Hirsch of Committee to Bridge the Gap has stated, "It is hard to conceive of a proposed environmental regulation or action that raises such serious questions of inter-generational immorality." The significant numbers of people who would die from Yucca's leaking wastes over the course of time would have had no say in the decision to open the dump, nor would have received any supposed benefit from it, or from the nuclear reactors that generated the HLRW in the first place. Those future generations would bear only the cost, a large human cost.

EPA explicitly admits to such deadly double standards, citing the Swedish National Council for Nuclear Waste's (KASAM) position that '…our moral responsibility diminishes on a sliding scale over the course of time," and advocating a "Strong Principle of Justice" for the first 5 or 6 generations (roughly 150 years), a "Weak Principle of Justice" for a further 5 or 6 generations after that, and then a "Minimal Principle of Justice" beyond that. (7) EPA's unethical and immoral proposal certainly would represent a horrible injustice for future generations. It is quite ironic because DOE explains its rush to open the Yucca dump as a matter of inter-generational responsibility in that current generations created the HLRW and thus should solve the problem so that future generations need not worry about it. (8) Future generations would have much to worry about if EPA's proposal stands.

EPA's use of the State of Colorado's relatively high level of "background radiation" in an attempt to justify allowing added doses of 350 mrem/yr to Yucca's neighbors is twisted and unacceptable. EPA cites the national average for background radiation as 350 mrem/yr. But even this is wrong and misleading. About two-thirds of that figure is due to radon exposures within houses and buildings. Only natural radiation, such as from cosmic rays and other natural sources that people are exposed to outdoors, which is difficult to avoid or control, should be considered "natural background." EPA's proposed 350-mrem/yr dose from Yucca would be in addition to the background radiation (including indoor radon) that people would already be exposed to.

It should be noted that residents near Yucca are also exposed to additional radioactive contamination from the nearby Nevada Test Site's nuclear weapons explosions and "low" level radioactive waste shipments and dumping there and at the nearby, leaking Beatty, Nevada "low" level atomic waste dump.

In NAS's recent BEIR VII study, it reported that about 1 in 100 Americans would contract cancer just from the non-radon component of background radiation. A full three percent of the American public can already be expected to contract cancer from their exposure to outdoor natural radiation plus indoor radon, so that this "background" dose of 350 mrem/yr is far from safe. Thus, EPA is proposing that a full six percent of the public living downstream from Yucca be allowed to contract cancer, half of that from "background" (including radon), and half from the leaking dump.

EPA has deceptively tried to blur the distinction between "background radiation" and Yucca's leaking wastes, both of which are harmful to human beings. EPA proposes adding the 1 in 36 cancer rate from Yucca to the 1 in 36 cancer rate from "background" radiation to yield a 1 in 18 cancer rate overall. (9)

EPA's proposed standards would be, by far, the worst in the Western world. France would limit maximum doses, estimated to occur hundreds of thousands of years in the future, to 25 mrem/yr. Canada limits doses to about 10 mrem/yr for 10,000 years, but does not allow a sudden increase after that. (1)

EPA will accept public comments on its proposal until November 21. Email comments to a-and-r-docket@epa.gov, Attention Docket No. OAR-2005-0083. Be sure to include all your contact information. Go to www.nirs.org for additional information, sample comments, and ways to take action.

Sources:

  1. IEER press release, "Environmental Protection Agency's Proposed Rule on Repository for High-Level Radioactive Waste Would Seriously Undermine Public Health," Aug. 9, 2005, http://www.ieer.org/latest/yuccaepapr0805.html
  2. EPA press release, "Whitman Announces Final Standards for Yucca Mountain on Public Health and Environmental Protection," June 6, 2001. Specifically, EPA stated that 3 chest x-ray were equivalent to18 mrem. See http://www.epa.gov/newsroom/newsreleases.htm
  3. Physicians for Social Responsibility phone-in press conference, Oct. 10, 2005.
  4. Dr. Arjun Makhijani, President, IEER, on Physicians for Social Responsibility phone-in press conference, Oct. 10, 2005.
  5. Email from Dan Hirsch, Committee to Bridge the Gap, Sept. 22, 2005.
  6. Phone conversation with and email from Bob Loux, Executive Director, State of Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, Oct. 10, 2005.
  7. U.S. Federal Register, Vol. 70, No. 161, Monday, Aug. 22, 2005, Proposed Rules, Environmental Protection Agency, 40 CFR Part 197, Public Health and Environmental Radiation Protection Standards for Yucca Mountain, Nevada, Page 49036.
  8. Personal conversation with Lake Barrett, Acting Director of DOE's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, Sept. 1999.
  9. See references #1 and #4, above.

 

Contact: Kevin Kamps at NIRS kevin@nirs.org