[AGL] Opportunity for Bush to Step Up...

[Wayne Johnson]

Clearly, this is an opportunity for the President of the United States to 
make clear his intention to keep America safe.  All it would require.....and 
this would set a marvelous example for Republicans everywhere....is for him 
to volunteer land in Texas as a permanent home for nuclear waste.  Why 
should Nevada get all the "glory"?

Starting with his holdings in...or actually, beneath....Crawford.

It is quite likely that with this breathtakingly simple solution to such a 
vexing issue, people like Tom DeLay would do the same and Rick Goodhair, the 
Governor.  If they don't have a ranch or an old abandoned oil well, 
they....were they True Patriots...volunteer to ingest some nuclear waste 
themselves.  Think of the Prime Time Photo Opportunities.  Imagine how 
History would reward them!

I get all moist just thinking about it.

RB

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EPA in hot seat over nuclear storage radiation
Some senators resist proposal, Nevada Republican calls it a ‘farce’

MSNBC News Services
Updated: 9:35 a.m. ET March 2, 2006


WASHINGTON - The Environmental Protection Agency will issue a final rule by 
the end of the year on how much radiation can be released from the Yucca 
Mountain nuclear waste dump, an agency official told senators at a hearing 
Wednesday.

William Wehrum, acting assistant administrator of EPA's office of air and 
radiation, defended the agency's proposed rule against criticism from Nevada 
lawmakers and a Democratic senator from California who said it wouldn't 
adequately protect human health.

"Our job at EPA is to set standards for the Yucca Mountain repository that 
are fully protective of human health and safety," Wehrum said at a Senate 
Environment and Public Works Committee hearing.

He received strong support from the committee's chairman, Republican Sen. 
James Inhofe of Oklahoma, who asked whether the rule might be "too 
conservative" compared with approaches taken in Europe. Wehrum said the 
standard was consistent with international approaches.


Store more there?
Inhofe also said after the hearing that he'd be open to voting to increase 
the storage capacity of Yucca Mountain, which by law is supposed to hold 
77,000 tons of radioactive waste. Because of waste already waiting at 
reactor sites nationwide, the repository will be full soon after it opens.

Spent fuel from U.S. nuclear plants — which supply about 20 percent of U.S. 
electricity — is piling up. More than 50,000 tons of it is stored at over 
100 temporary locations in 39 states.

The EPA in August proposed limiting radiation exposure near the planned dump 
90 miles northwest of Las Vegas to 15 millirems a year for 10,000 years, 
then increasing the allowable level to 350 millirems a year for up to 1 
million years.

That higher level is more than three times what is allowed from nuclear 
facilities today by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. A standard chest 
X-ray is about 10 millirems.

The EPA issued the rule under consideration after a federal court said the 
agency's first standard was inadequate because it didn't establish exposure 
limits beyond 10,000 years. A public comment period for the rule ended Nov. 
21, and the agency is reviewing comments and will finalize the rule by 
year's end, Wehrum said.

Weighing radiation risks
Nevada Sens. Harry Reid and John Ensign criticized the standard. Ensign, a 
Republican, called it "a farce."

Reid and Ensign have instead proposed handling nuclear waste through “dry 
cask storage,” a process that would allow nuclear reactors to store waste 
on-site.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., cited a study that she said showed cancer 
risks at the 350 millirem level increasing to one in four for women and one 
in five for men.

"This is such a nightmare that we're abandoning ... what we consider to be 
an acceptable cancer risk," Boxer said.

But a scientist who testified before the committee, Dade Moeller, former 
president of the Health Physics Society, said his estimates show a smaller 
increase of cancer risk under the proposed rules — perhaps 1 percent or 
less. Moeller's company has done contract work for the Energy Department.

The radiation issue and other problems with the project have caused a series 
of delays. The Energy Department originally was supposed to submit its 
application for a license to operate the dump to the Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission by December 2004.

Paul Golan, acting director of the department's Office of Civilian 
Radioactive Waste Management, couldn't provide senators a new date but said 
the department would release a schedule this summer.