The Environmental Protection Agency Tuesday published standards for protecting health and the environment at the proposed nuclear waste storage site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, where the nation may bury radioactive waste from its fleet of 100+ nuclear power plants, and from Defense Department nuclear weapons sites.
The details -- how many millirem of radiation can safely leak out -- would be meaningless to most people, who don't often think about their daily dose of radiation.
The bottom line on that, according to EPA as quoted by the Las Vegas Sun, is that the standards are in line with international radioactive waste management guidelines. Nevada's senators and other opponents of the Yucca Mountain storage plan vociferously objected to the rules, calling them dangerous and based on flawed science.
For argument's sake, assume that the millirem limit is safe. What still gives skeptics pause about a central waste storage site, and nuclear power in general, is the time scale it must remain secure.
The EPA set a low leak limit for the first 10,000 years, and then set a standard more than six times higher for the next million years (though still less than one-third the average annual dose of radiation that Americans receive from the sun and other sources today).
A million years.
That's how long radioactive waste from nuclear power plants remains dangerous, how long it must be safely stored, how long people must be wary about coming into contact with too many millirem of radiation.
It may well be, however, that global warming can't be solved without making this bargain with future generations. ...
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