Issues

Junk-science experts
tweak Harry Reid

By Steven Miller
BusinessNevada

If U.S. Senator Harry Reid honestly thinks human beings would be at serious risk under the Environmental Protection Agency’s new radiation standards, he should immediately start clamoring for an emergency program for the U.S. Capitol, where radiation exceeds those standards, say junk science specialists at the Cato Institute.

Reid lambasted newly proposed EPA standards Tuesday as the product of "voodoo science and arbitrary numbers," calling the criteria “the latest attempt by the Bush Administration to ignore sound science and disregard the health and safety of Nevadans."

The new EPA rules would limit exposure near the proposed Yucca Mountain facility in Nevada to 15 millirems a year for the next 10,000 years. Recently, researchers in Washington D.C. measured gamma radiation dose rates in a Capitol building hallway and outside the Thomas Jefferson Building. They found that individuals in those locations could receive anywhere from 60 millirems to 260 millirems of gamma radiation per year depending on the exposure scenario.

"These radiation dose rates are much higher than the EPA proposed to allow at the planned high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada," noted Cato Institute researcher Steven Milloy, who administers the Institute’s junkscience.com website project.

"We hope that Sen. Reid will act immediately to protect Capitol building visitors, employees and future generations from this radiation hazard,” said Milloy.

“We've asked Sen. Reid to undertake a comprehensive radiation survey of the Capitol and recommended that radiation hazard signs be used until the radiation sources can be removed and disposed in accordance with hazardous waste regulations," he added.

The study, Radiation Sources at the U.S. Capitol and Library of Congress Buildings, is by Milloy and Michael Gough, Ph.D. Gough is a member of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services committee advising the U.S. Air Force on its study of the health effects of Agent Orange. The white paper, funded by a grant from Citizens for the Integrity of Science, is on-line at http://junkscience.com/apr01/crstudy.htm.

The Cato Institute defines "junk science" as “faulty scientific data and analysis used to further a special agenda.” The junk science "mob," says junkscience.com, includes: media, personal injury lawyers, social activists, government regulators, businesses, politicians, individual scientists and individuals.

In June 2001, following initial publication by EPA of radiation standards for the Yucca Mountain repository, Reid, along with fellow Nevada senator John Ensign, had hailed the new standards as “a milestone in the battle to allow the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to carry out the law.” Both senators praised the extremely low radiation limits regarding mountain groundwater—approximately 4 millirems annually, the same as drinking water.  

However, within the month the state Nuclear Projects Agency and a consortium of environmental groups filed separate federal lawsuits, challenging the adequacy of the EPA's standards. State Nuclear Projects Agency chief Bob Loux said the EPA's radiation rule-making should not deal with expected conditions at Yucca Mountain for a mere 10,000 years into the future, but should be designed to protect people for at least 800,000 years.

In July 2004, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the EPA standards against the lawsuits on all counts except one: the 10,000-year time frame. Although recorded human history on this planet goes back less than 6,000 years, and though archeological records indicate that humans invented agriculture and settled down in cities only 10,000 years ago, a three-judge federal panel ruled that a million-year framework suggestion in a 1995 National Academy of Sciences report should be more strictly followed under a 1992 federal law.  

The NAS report, “Technical Bases for Yucca Mountain Standards,” had recommended that the standard should be applied “within the limits imposed by the long-term stability of the geologic environment, which is on the order of one million years.”

In the EPA’s original 2001 rulemaking, however, the agency had noted that it is not possible to make reliable estimates of repository performance over such a long time frame. Given such uncertainties, EPA had adopted instead a 10,000-year compliance period, noting that this was “the time frame used for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico and for many international geologic disposal programs.” It then included the million-year time frame within relevant technical advisory considerations.

However, in response to the 2004 court ruling, the EPA prepared its newly proposed standards and released them for review Tuesday. In addition to the original criteria for the first 10,000 years, the new standards now include a second “tier” for the next 999,990 years. That rule would limit exposure for someone living near Yucca Mountain some 10,001 years from now to a maximum of 350 millirem per year from the repository. Since normal background radiation for Americans today—mainly from natural sources—comes to about 350-360 millirem, the new standards would allow about 700 millirems exposure annually for a nearby rural resident. That is about the same amount of radiation that Americans living in high-altitude cities like Denver currently receive.

Thus, in the unlikely event that there is still a U.S. government existing 10,001 years from now, that government, under the new EPA standards, would be legally responsible for dealing with a situation where radiation emissions from the Yucca Mountain facility exceed 700-710 millirems annually for people living close by.

An unmentioned irony in all of the sparring is that nuclear industry observers expect nuclear “waste” stored at Yucca Mountain, should such storage even come nominally to pass, to be sold for re-processing within 20 years as a highly valuable commodity in an increasingly energy-hungry world. For more on the subject, see the Nevada Policy Research Institute’s 2001 white paper, Spare the Rods: The Free-Market Alternative to the Yucca Mountain Repository, by D. Dowd Muska.

The EPA’s full 217-page document released Tuesday—Public Health and Environmental Radiation Protection Standards for Yucca Mountain, Nevada—can be downloaded at http://www.epa.gov/radiation/docs/yucca/rin-2060-an15.pdf .