[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 128 (Tuesday, September 28, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11529-S11531]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               LOWERING THE RADIATION PROTECTION STANDARD

  Mr. BRYAN. Mr. President, in what has become one of the more 
unpleasant annual rituals here in the Senate, the majority leader has 
once again put the Senate on notice that we may soon consider 
legislation related to the disposal of high-level nuclear waste at the 
Yucca Mountain site in Nevada.
  Since the Senate last considered this subject, the sponsors of this 
legislation have realized that the Senators from Nevada, and the 
Clinton administration, will never yield to the outrageous and 
dangerous--in my view very dangerous--demands of the nuclear power 
industry.
  This year, it appears that the industry and its advocates here in the 
Senate have finally conceded defeat, and dropped their misguided 
attempts to require ``interim'' storage of high-level nuclear waste in 
Nevada.
  We have been fighting the ``interim'' storage proposal since 1995, 
and its demise is a major victory not only for Nevadans, but for 
millions of other citizens, and taxpayers across the country.
  Some of what remains in the current nuclear waste proposal, S. 1287, 
is reasonable.
  In particular, I have long supported providing financial relief to 
utilities, and their ratepayers, who are financially damaged by the 
Federal Government's failure to begin removing waste from reactor sites 
in 1998.
  Under the leadership of Secretary Richardson, the administration has 
offered to work with the utilities to provide such financial relief, 
and several of the provisions of this legislation are intended to give 
the Secretary the legal authority he needs to carry out this proposal.
  If financial relief for the utilities was all we were talking about, 
I believe we could pass a bill today.
  Other provisions of the bill, will, I expect, continue to draw a veto 
threat from the White House.
  Should the Senate actually attempt to move to the bill in the coming 
months, I will have a lot more to say about the unsafe and 
irresponsible changes this legislation would make to the Federal high-
level waste program, but today I want to focus briefly on one 
particular provision that in my view is threatening and dangerous and 
that is the attempt to lower the radiation protection standard to be 
applied to a potential repository site at Yucca Mountain.
  The starting point for any fair evaluation of a potential repository 
is a fair and protective radiation release standard.
  Since it is against this standard that the predicted performance of a 
repository is measured, the health and safety of the public depend on a 
strict and comprehensive standard.
  The legislation reported by the Senate Energy Committee, if enacted, 
would emasculate current law and the Environmental Protection Agency's 
effort to establish a fair Yucca Mountain standard by shifting the 
responsibility for setting the standard to the NRC, the Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission, and establish, by legislative fiat, a standard 
far less protective of the public and the environment.
  Since its creation by President Nixon nearly 3 decades ago, the 
Environmental Protection Agency has been the Federal agency charged 
with developing radiation release standards.
  The EPA was created for a sound reason, which still holds true today: 
to

[[Page S11530]]

consolidate the Federal Government's effort to protect the environment 
in one Federal agency.
  As the lead Federal Agency for environmental protection, the EPA has, 
for many years, set standards for a wide variety of pollutants, 
including radiation, to be applied by a wide variety of Federal 
agencies and regulatory bodies.
  In addition to its general authority to set radiation standards, the 
EPA was specifically charged, by statute, with setting standards for 
high-level waste disposal by the original Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 
1982.
  Under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the EPA is charged with setting 
the standard, the NRC is charged with implementing the standard, and 
the DOE is charged with characterizing and building a repository.
  When the Nuclear Waste Policy Act was amended in 1987, numerous 
changes were made, but the EPA's role as the standard setting agency 
was left untouched.
  In 1992, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act was amended once again, and 
over my objections, this time the statute relating to the standard was 
changed.
  In an effort by the nuclear power industry to influence the outcome 
of the EPA's work, the National Academy of Sciences was instructed to 
make recommendations to the EPA regarding the standard, and the EPA 
standard was required to be consistent with the NAS recommendations.
  In 1992, Congress nevertheless was still unwilling to set the 
dangerous precedent of taking the standard setting authority away from 
the EPA.
  To the disappointment of the nuclear industry and its supporters, 
however, this attempt in 1992 to have legislative changes to modify the 
law in an attempt to prejudice the EPA's work backfired--the industry 
was unhappy with the NAS's 1995 study, and renewed its effort to 
jerryrig a legislative standard that gutted the EPA provisions in the 
original Nuclear Waste Policy Act.
  Recently, after years of work, and numerous delays, the EPA issued a 
proposed radiation release standard for Yucca Mountain.
  The EPA is currently accepting comments on the proposed standard, and 
will continue to work with all parties interested in developing a final 
standard in the next few years.
  But supporters of the industry's efforts to target nuclear waste for 
Nevada do not want a fair standard. They want a standard so low that 
Yucca Mountain, or any other site, simply could not fail.
  The industry wants a standard that will provide a path around the 
many failings of the site, irrespective of the effects on public health 
and safety.
  Although the radiation release standards are technical in nature, and 
quite complicated, the major issues of contention between the EPA, the 
NRC, and industry, however, are not.
  First, what is the maximum increase in exposure to radiation Nevadans 
should be expected to bear due to the operation of the repository? And 
the second question is, should we protect a major aquifer that lies 
underneath the proposed repository site?
  On the first subject--the level of protection--the report prepared by 
the National Academy of Sciences provides some helpful guidance.
  This exhibit, as reflected in the chart, reflects that range. The 
white brackets here indicate the standard range from 2 to 20. The NRC 
standard, as one can see, in S. 1287, the current legislation, is far 
beyond the parameters of what the NAS, the National Academy of 
Sciences, has recommended. The EPA standard, on the other hand, set at 
15 millirems, is well within those standards. So that is consistent 
with what the 1992 legislative changes mandated.
  The exposure levels suggested by the NAS and the EPA were not simply 
plucked out of thin air. Both agencies relied heavily on similar 
standards established in the United States and by other countries. As 
this chart indicates, again, at the top is S. 1287, 30 millirems, which 
is far beyond the standard of most other countries; EPA at 15, the 
United Kingdom at 2; Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Denmark, and 
Finland at 10.
  Once again, the EPA standard lies well within the midrange of 
standard practices around the world, while the standard included in S. 
1287, as I indicated, lies at the extreme upper end of the range of 
existing practice.
  More technical, but just as important, is the issue of what 
population the standard is measured against.
  For the EPA proposal, the standard will be applied to the group of 
people most likely to be harmed--using reasonable assumptions regarding 
distance from the repository, and average eating and other personal 
habits, the EPA standard protects the ``maximally exposed individual.'' 
S. 1287 would apply the standard to an ``average'' member of what could 
be a very large group of individuals--leading to the possibility of 
very large exposures to members of the group who are at greater than 
``average'' risk from the repository.
  Proponents of gutting the radiation release standard, and of taking 
the EPA out of the process, claim that Nevadan's concerns are 
meaningless, and that natural variations in background radiation 
between regions render our concerns with an increased millirems a year 
meaningless.
  That argument shows a blatant disregard for the health and safety of 
the people of Nevada.
  We all live with whatever background radiation we may be exposed to; 
there is nothing we can do about that.
  What we can do, as a matter of sound public health policy, is limit 
the amount of radiation exposure we add to background from manmade 
sources.
  An ordinary chest x-ray--something we all subject ourselves to when 
necessary, but certainly don't consider a desirable event to occur on a 
regular basis--results in an exposure of about 5 millirems.
  Under the legislation reported by the Energy Committee, Nevadans 
would be subjected to the equivalent of at least 6 additional, and 
unnecessary, chest x-rays each and every year.
  We don't really know what the full health related effects of this 
type of exposure can result in, but I doubt that any member of the 
Senate would volunteer to subject his or her state, or family, to that 
type of risk.
  Even under the EPA's proposed standard, individuals could expect to 
be subjected to future exposures equivalent to three chest x-rays a 
year--a proposal which, while more suitable than the alternatives 
offered by the nuclear power industry over the years, provides little 
comfort to Nevadans.
  The second major issue which has raised such outrage by the nuclear 
power industry, the NRC, and their supporters here in Congress is the 
EPA's insistence upon requiring compliance with a separate groundwater 
standard.
  Under the EPA's proposed standard, the repository would need to be in 
compliance with the goals of the Safe Drinking Water Act, which, in 
effect, limits radiological contamination of the groundwater to 4 
mrems.
  The proposed Yucca Mountain site lies over a major, if largely 
untapped, aquifer.
  Water from the aquifer is currently a source of drinking water for 
several small communities in the vicinity of Yucca Mountain; it could, 
in the future, provide a drinking water source for several hundred 
thousand people.
  While it is clearly not now a cost-effective source of drinking water 
on a large scale, it is incomprehensible to someone from the desert 
Southwest to intentionally contaminate such a large potential source of 
drinking water.
  The EPA has been charged with protecting our nation's drinking water 
sources, and it takes that responsibility very seriously.

  It has established standards to protect drinking water sources in a 
wide variety of regulatory programs, including those related to 
hazardous-waste disposal, municipal-waste disposal, underground 
injection control, generic spent nuclear fuel, high level waste, and 
transuranic radioactive waste disposal, and uranium mill tailings 
disposal.
  All of these, and other, EPA standards and programs work together to 
protect groundwater resources throughout the nation, and the Yucca 
Mountain standard is merely another piece of this important regulatory 
framework.
  The bottom line is simple: the groundwater under Yucca Mountain needs 
to be protected.

[[Page S11531]]

  The standard proposed earlier this year by the NRC, and the standard 
included in S. 1287, encourage the intentional contamination of a 
potentially important aquifer running under the proposed repository 
site.
  The EPA is duty bound to protect this aquifer, and has done so in its 
proposed standard.
  It would be unconscionable for Congress to step in and reverse course 
on what has been a nearly 30 year effort by the EPA, and numerous other 
federal, state, and local governmental agencies, to protect and 
preserve our valuable natural resources.
  While the Yucca Mountain standard is controversial, this is not the 
first time the federal government has gone through the exercise of 
setting radiation release standards.
  Most recently, the EPA established standards for the Waste Isolation 
Pilot Project in New Mexico.
  Like the proposed Yucca Mountain standard, the EPA's WIPP standard 
provides a maximum exposure of 15 millirems/year, and includes a 
separate 4 millirems groundwater standard.
  It is not unreasonable for Nevadans to expect the same level of 
protection offered the citizens of New Mexico--and that is exactly what 
the EPA has proposed.
  Fair treatment of Nevadans, of course, is not something that appears 
on the nuclear power industry's list of priorities.
  Unfortunately for Nevadans, the nuclear power industry does not care 
much about the justification behind the EPA proposed standard.
  For the industry and its supporters, the EPA is nothing more than an 
impediment to their ultimate plan to ship high-level nuclear waste to 
Nevada, no matter what the cost.
  For the nuclear power industry, the test of whether or not a standard 
will be acceptable is not how protective it may be of the public health 
and safety, it is whether or not it allows a repository to be licensed.
  Instead of focusing its attention on whether or not the Yucca 
Mountain site can meet a fair radiation release standard, the nuclear 
power industry is attempting to rig the standard to comport to what is 
being found at Yucca Mountain.
  This cynical approach to public health and safety has led the 
industry along a strategy that seeks to undo decades of 
federal environmental protection policy, and to ask Congress to 
establish a very dangerous precedent of ``forum shopping'' for 
environmental protection standards and regulation.

  Mr. President, Nevadans have the most at stake with the development 
of the Yucca Mountain standard.
  The health and safety of future generations of Nevadans depend on a 
fair, protective standard.
  There are, however, broader issues at stake here as well.
  The integrity of our system of federal environmental protection is at 
risk.
  The fundamental reason the EPA was created was to consolidate and 
coordinate federal environmental protection in a single agency.
  Reassigning important standard setting authority to a more 
sympathetic agency on the whim of a particular industry could well mark 
the unraveling of decades of progress in protecting our environment.
  Should the nuclear power industry have its way with Congress, and 
succeed in its efforts to undermine the EPA's long standing authority 
to set standards, who is next? Should we start down a path of returning 
to the days before 1970, when environmental protection was a hit or 
miss proposition for the federal government, leading to events such as 
1969 fire near Cleveland, where sparks from a passing train actually 
ignited the polluted Cuyahoga river? I hope not.
  Some in Congress continue to claim that Nevadans' concerns are 
foolish, that the shipment and burial of 80,000 metric tons of high-
level nuclear waste are nothing to worry about.
  Anyone subscribing to that line of reasoning should talk to some of 
the downwinders suffering genetic and cancer effects from our 
atmospheric nuclear testing; or the thousands of children suffering 
thyroid and other problems due to the 1986 Chernyobl accident; or the 
thousands of DOE workers at the Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Paducah, 
Kentucky, now agonizing over the effects of 40 years of mismanagement 
and coverup.
  As Secretary Richardson has said about the situation in Paducah ``we 
weren't always straight with them in the past.''.
  Mr. President, the Senate has plenty of work to do this fall.
  Only one Appropriations bill has been signed into law, and the fiscal 
year ends this week.
  Inportant measures that most of us agree need to pass, such as the 
Bankruptcy bill, or the FAA reauthorization, sit on the calendar 
awaiting action.
  The nuclear waste bill reported by the Energy Committee is an 
environmental travesty which stands no chance of being enacted, and I 
hope the Majority leader will come to the conclusion that we should not 
waste any more of the Senate's time on this irresponsible special 
interest legislation.

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