nuclear-news

Is America’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) weakening standards for nuclear safety?

EPA Documents Raise Doubts Over Intent of New Nuclear-Response Guide
National Journal By Douglas P. Guarino, Global Security Newswire September 11, 2013 WASHINGTON —Newly obtained government documents are prompting concern among critics that Environmental Protection Agency officials are seeking to use the organization’s new guide for nuclear-incident response to relax public health standards, but the agency is denying the claim.

The Freedom of Information Act release comes as the agency has yet to finish collecting public comments on the so-called protective-action guide, which it issued in April after years of internal infighting and public controversy. The document is meant to give federal, state and local officials advice on responding to a wide range of radiological incidents, such as “dirty bomb” attacks, nuclear power plant meltdowns and industrial accidents.

The documents obtained by Global Security Newswire show EPA officials have suggested at meetings around the world that the new guide could allow for the use of long-term cleanup standards dramatically less stringent than those the agency has enforced for decades at hundreds of sites throughout the United States, critics say.

In some cases, EPA officials have not only suggested that a drastic event akin to the Fukushima nuclear power plant meltdown in Japan would necessitate more flexible guidelines, but also have made statements that critics say challenge the very science behind the agency’s everyday radiation rules.

“I think [EPA Administrator] Gina McCarthy has an out-of-control agency,” Daniel Hirsch, a nuclear-policy lecturer at the University of California-Santa Cruz, told GSN after reviewing the documents. “She has some people who are acting as nuclear cowboys, on behalf of EPA, undermining EPA’s policies and I think the public could get very badly hurt by it.”…….

Most recently, a February NCRP report funded by the U.S. Homeland Security Department suggested implementing ICRP cleanup goals under which an annual radiation dose of up to 2,000 millirems per year is permitted — a rate at which as many as 1 in 20 people would be expected to develop cancer from long-term exposure. Normally, EPA does not permit actions that would leave more than 1 in 10,000 people at risk for cancer from 30 years of exposure, pursuant to rules its Superfund program established in the 1980s……..

A ‘fundamental shift’

As it was, watchdog groups already were raising alarms over comments that Paul Kudarauskas, an official with the EPA Consequence Management Advisory Team, made earlier this year suggesting events like Fukushima would cause a “fundamental shift” to cleanup.

Kudarauskas in March said that U.S. residents are used to having “cleanup to perfection,” but would have to abandon their “not-in-my-backyard” mentality in such cases. “People are going to have to put on their big-boy pants and suck it up,” the EPA official said.

The Chicago-based Nuclear Energy Information Service, a critic of the new EPA guide, cited GSN’s reporting of Kudarauskas’ remarks in Aug. 1 comments on the new guide. The activist group’s comments ask that the agency rescind the document and fire Kudarauskas……..http://www.nationaljournal.com/global-security-newswire/epa-documents-raise-doubts-over-intent-of-new-nuclear-response-guide-20130911?mrefid=mostViewed

Exposure vs. cancer risk

Now presentations EPA officials are making regarding cleanup after radiological incidents suggest some agency staffers are looking to challenge the cancer-risk science underlying nearly all of the agency’s radiation regulations by suggesting there are scientifically valid alternatives, activists say.

A May 2012 presentation to Japanese officials dealing with the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster led by John Cardarelli — an official in EPA’s emergency management office and a colleague of Kudarauskas on the EPA Consequence Management Advisory Team — says officials should “candidly acknowledge [the] limitations of risk-analysis mechanisms.” That is a reference to mathematical models scientists use to project the correlation between cancer incidents and radiation exposure.

In accordance with the recommendations of the National Academies of Science, official EPA policy endorses what is called the “linear no-threshold” model, which — based largely on studies of atomic-bomb survivors in Japan and some other data — assumes there is no safe level of radiation exposure. The model presupposes that cancer risk increases proportionally with the size of the radiation dose an individual receives.

Cardarelli’s presentation, however, presents alternative theories previously rejected by NAS and EPA scientists, including one, called “hormesis,” which argues that low levels of radiation exposure are actually beneficial.

The EPA statement to GSN defends the presentation, arguing that “technical information is available to support all of the models” it cites — including hormesis, another theory that assumes radiation is less harmful than NAS scientists have found, and a third that suggests it could be more harmful. The “scientific community is not unified on radiation health effects,” the EPA statement claims.

Hirsch slammed the EPA defense of the presentation, calling the cited alternative theories “kooky stuff from the margin of science.

“The scientific community is not united on this?” Hirsch continued. “It went to the National Academies of Science, which unanimously concluded: Yes, [the correct model] is linear no-threshold. If you pardon the expression, it is a little bit like the climate deniers saying that the science community is not united on this matter. … They’re making it sound like the National Academies of Science are just one little player in this and that EPA is just one little player.”

A separate September 2012 presentation by Cardarelli to an interagency group led by the Homeland Security Department appears to suggest that EPA regulations are the opposite of science and that complying with EPA cancer risk rules is the opposite of conducting a “practical cleanup.”

Echoing Kudarauskas, the presentation says the Fukushima disaster has necessitated “a fundamental shift in our thinking” and cites a 100 millirem per year radiation dose limit as an alternative. About 1 in 300 people would be expected to develop cancer if exposed to this level for 30 years, according to calculations performed using the NAS and EPA-approved risk figures.

Even the International Commission on Radiological Protection’s projections would put the risk at roughly 1 in 400, which is about 25 times greater than what EPA rules would normally allow under the worst circumstances……..The agency is accepting public comments on the new guide through Sept. 16. http://www.nationaljournal.com/global-security-newswire/epa-documents-raise-doubts-over-intent-of-new-nuclear-response-guide-20130911?mrefid=mostViewed

September 13, 2013 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | civil liberties, safety, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA