Can we keep you safe for a million years?No problem, EPA says; we've got it covered

Photograph by Peter Essick, National Geographic
Each of these steel cylinders at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Kentucky holds 14 tons of depleted uranium left over from an enrichment process that changes ore to fuel for reactors.


Great news! The federal government has announced a radiation standard to protect Nevadans from nuclear waste for the next million years.

"The U.S. government has no plan for getting out of Iraq, balancing the budget, or repairing a hemorrhaging health-care system, but nuclear waste? It's got that covered for the next million years," the environmental newsletter Grist says. "Yes, responding to a 2004 federal court ruling that the previous standard of 10 millennia was insufficient, the EPA has revised its plan for the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear-waste dump in Nevada to account for earthquakes, climate change, and other potential upsets for an additional 990,000 years."

There's a need to keep nuclear waste out of the environment for a million years because some of its components remain deadly that long. After 250,000 years, a piece of plutonium the size of a grain of pollen could still give you cancer.

People in Nevada are understandably a bit skeptical about whether the government can protect them for 10,000 years, let alone a million. (Some perspective: Ten thousand years ago, Wisconsin was covered by glaciers.)

Some of the reaction:

"In short they've decided to kill a few people," said Joe Egan, an attorney who represented Nevada in the court fight over the project. "This is an obvious effort to give the project a pass" after the 10,000-year period.

Nevada Sen. John Ensign, a Republican, said he was "appalled at the complete arrogance of the EPA in announcing these standards."

More reaction from the AP:

"This is junk science at its worst," said Gov. Kenny Guinn. "We were pessimistic about the outcome, given EPA's record of pushing the repository. But never in our wildest nightmares would we have anticipated such a ridiculous standard."

Guinn noted the proposed standard was "three-and-a-half times more lenient" than the nuclear industry had recommended in its formal report to the EPA. "I can't imagine how they could have done anything to make themselves more vulnerable in the court of law as well as the court of science," Guinn said.

"What the agency released today is nothing more than voodoo science and arbitrary numbers," said U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. "At the time when the public faces the highest risk of radiation exposure, EPA proposes easing the overall public health standard, including throwing out the groundwater standard."

Reid, the Senate minority leader, accused the EPA of "trying to silence voices of opposition" by limiting a comment period to 60 days. "This is the latest attempt by the Bush Administration to ignore sound science and disregard the health and safety of Nevadans."

Nevada Attorney General Brian Sandoval vowed the state's battle against the project will continue in court. "If this bogus new standard, or anything close to it, ends up being adopted by EPA, Nevada will sue them again," Sandoval said. "It's an obscenely lax and dangerous new standard. They just threw up their arms and gave the project a pass."

"I guess Nevadans are expendable," said Bob Loux, director of Nevada's Nuclear Projects Office and Gov. Kenny Guinn's chief anti-dump spokesman. Loux called the standard "100 times more lenient than for people living next to the 103 (commercial nuclear) reactors around the country, and three and a half times more lenient than even the nuclear power industry was asking for."

"This is obviously another example of the Bush administration trying to ram through another environmental policy that threatens the health and safety of not only everyone in Nevada but everyone in the United States," said Sierra Club of Nevada spokeswoman Tara Smith. "If this standard is OK for Nevada, then pretty soon it's going to be OK anywhere they want to store nuclear waste temporarily or permanently."

"The standard released by the EPA today is arbitrary and grossly misguided," said Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev. "EPA has an obligation to protect public safety today, tomorrow, and in a million years." Gibbons said the EPA had no scientific evidence that increasing its radiation standard from 15 millirem to 350 millirem after 10,000 years was "warranted or safe. The EPA should not speculate that a standard which is not deemed safe today could miraculously become a safe standard in the future," he said. "Public health and safety standards should not be based on speculation and supposition."

"This proposal is but the latest in a long line of attempts by the Bush administration to jump-start stalled efforts to bury the nation's nuclear waste in Nevada," Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said in a statement. "The EPA can propose any number it wants, but the real trick will be proving this new standard can be met, and it remains to be proven that can be done."

"The EPA's so-called 'health standard' projections for determining what is a safe level of radiation exposure for Nevadans are irrational and misguided," said Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev. "Where's the proof that an additional 350 millirem per year of radiation won't have a negative impact on a human being?" Porter said the only way to protect the health and safety of Nevadans was "to make sure Yucca Mountain never becomes a repository for the nation's nuclear waste."

"I am appalled at the complete arrogance of the EPA in announcing these standards," said Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev. He called the standard "a blatant disregard for science, the law and the health of Nevadans. We've been down this road before," Ensign said. "The federal appeals court already determined that the 10,000-year standard violated the law. This new standard is no better, and the EPA has provided no scientific basis for the 350 millirem figure."