Standards disclosed for nuke waste dump

Nevada officials don't want it in their state

Washington Post 6jun01

Washington -- The Bush administration unveiled final health and safety standards yesterday for a proposed nuclear waste dump in the Nevada desert that officials hope will allow construction of the long-stalled project, which is essential to President Bush's moves to rejuvenate the nuclear power industry.

The new standards would regulate all potential sources of radiation exposure from groundwater, air and soil at the proposed underground storage site at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Administration officials said they believed the standards were tough enough to satisfy many environmentalists and Nevada residents, but not so stringent that they would block the project.

Any dispute over the standards would pose the last major hurdle to an administration decision on whether to go forward with the storage site. First proposed in the summer of 1999 by the Clinton administration, the standards drew sharp criticism from scientific groups and from Sen. Frank Murkowski, R- Alaska, and other GOP lawmakers who complained they were too stringent.

Nevada's state and federal elected officials, including Republican Gov. Kenny Guinn and U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, the powerful Senate Democratic whip, are overwhelmingly against the project.

Yesterday, Bush administration officials claimed a win-win: Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham insisted that his department could meet the new standards and launch the controversial project by the end of this year, while EPA officials boasted that they essentially had preserved the same tough standards proposed by the Clinton administration.

"As a nation, we must address our nuclear waste disposal problem, but we must do so in a way that protects public health and the environment," said Christie Whitman, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Construction of the storage site for 78,000 tons of radioactive waste would be vital to Bush's plan to address the nation's energy needs partly by expanding the use of nuclear power plants.

Abraham is expected to recommend by the end of the year that Bush go forward with plans to seek licensing of the site.

Nevada officials argue that the repository would pose serious threats to the region in the event of an accident or earthquake and that the waste would have to be hauled by truck or rail through more than 40 states, creating added risk of spills.

Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., the new majority leader, promised last week while attending a fund-raiser for Reid in Las Vegas that the Yucca Mountain project was "dead" as long as Democrats retained control of the Senate. Although political observers say it would be difficult to block the project indefinitely, Reid, now the chairman of a key appropriations subcommittee, and the Democrats probably could slow its construction by holding down its budget.

Because the proposed repository sits above an aquifer that is a critical source of water for irrigation, dairy cattle farming and drinking water, the EPA included a separate standard that would limit groundwater radiation contamination to 4 millirem per year, the same standard that is used in the Safe Drinking Water Act.