EPA Radiation Standard

In 1992, Congress directed the National Academies of Sciences to advise the Environmental Protection Agency on establishing a radiation standard that would protect public health. The standard would establish how much radiation an individual can safely be exposed to if the doomed Yucca Mountain project was ever completed.

In 2004, a federal appeals court found that the EPA violated federal law by ignoring the National Academies of Sciences' recommendations and arbitrarily eliminating the standard after 10,000. The Academy of Sciences found that peak radiation levels were likely to be reached at a much later date.

EPA was ordered to complete another radiation standard that would protect human health and safety. In August 2005, EPA released its second proposed radiation standards for Yucca Mountain. Again, the standard was wholly inadequate, does not meet the law's requirements. The new radiation standards submitted by EPA represent the latest attempt by the Administration to ignore sound science and disregard the health and safety of Nevadans.

EPA also proposed to throw out the groundwater standard post 10,000 years, the time of peak exposure, despite its own acknowledgement that groundwater is the primary path of radiation exposure for the public.

A recent NAS study has confirmed that there is a relationship between radiation exposure and cancer. In other words, there are adverse health effects from radiation even at the lowest levels. These effects can be devastating and include sudden death, cancer, birth defects, mental retardation, and developmental defects - both physical and mental. The EPA's proposed radiation standard flies in the face of logic, allowing DOE to proceed with a project that will invariably expose Nevadans to radiation.

In fact, EPA is proposing the least protect public health radiation standard in the world, a standard that is forty times weaker than the public health standard for low level radiation. This proposal is unacceptable and could needlessly expose people to the risk of horrible adverse effects for generations.