Yes, the EPA, bowing to a court order approved as the result of a US Court of Appeals Ruling has been forced to consider what might actually happen to our 70,000 tons of nuclear waste (and growing) over the next million years.
Does anyone else think the EPA's blithe response to an obvious deal-breaker borders on the insane? The pre-court order standard of 10,000 years, about twice as long as recorded human history, was crazy enough, but a million?
A sixth grader could look up the earth's crust's activities over the last million years and see that Nevada is about the worst place on the continent for this bizarre exercise. It is bright red with volcanic action. How can this be good?
There's more...
Our esteemed Republican-dominated congress overturned Nevada's home rule objection to the Yucca Mountain site in 2002, and the recent Supreme Court ruling on eminent domain may have sealed Nevada's nuclear fate. Determined, Harry Reid wasn't pleased then and he's still ticked, though apparently he remains unable to enact any change.
Essentially the EPA has taken the old standard of 10,000 years, where neighhbors would be exposed to no more than 15 millirems (comparable to a chest x-ray or transatlantic flight) per year, and tacked on an additional standard from the year 12005 to 1,002,005 of 350 millirems a year. Even the Electric Power Research Institute, a trade group, didn't have the cojones to suggest 350 millirems a year and recommended 100.
From one of the many news stories circulating this morning and yesterday:
"We thought it would be bad, but not this bad," said lawyer Joe Egan, who represented Nevada in the lawsuit that led to the new rule. "They gave the repository a complete pass and established an unprecedentedly lenient standard. It would be by far the most lenient standard in the world if it were to be adopted as proposed."
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., a longtime critic of the site, joined in the condemnation.
"What the agency released today is nothing more than voodoo science and arbitrary numbers," he said.
The Washington Post has more:
Arjun Makhijani, a nuclear fusion scientist and president of the Maryland-based Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, said the new guidelines would "be the most lax standards for a repository in the world."
"I'm really shocked the EPA has proposed this," Makhijani said. "It's not a standard to protect public health. It's a standard to protect the industry's interest in Yucca Mountain."
and also goes into better context showing that our standards would be worse even than nuclear-happy France. President Bush has been pushing this hard since he came into office and shows no sign of relenting. Public comment is open until early this fall and these rules could go into effect as early as October.
Calling it voodoo is a compliment. That anyone can discuss this with a straight face means we really have turned the corner away from the Enlightment, hard to starboard, off Science and Philosophy Boulevard for the Land of Have Faith, Pray and It'll All be Fine. Frankly, this makes me think everyone at EPA needs a really long Las Vegas vacation, say 25,000 or so generations.
First diary--looking to learn, here. Cross-posted at My Left Wing Thanks.