nuclear-news

EPA Mulls New Radiation Standards For Nuclear Plants

By Sean McLernon

3 February 2014

http://www.law360.com/articles/506351/epa-mulls-new-radiation-standards-for-nuclear-plants

Law360, New York (February 03, 2014, 4:01 PM ET) — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is considering new radiation regulation for nuclear plants, issuing a call for public comment and information Monday on a potential update to the 1977 standards covering uranium fuel used for electric power.

The 35-year-old environmental radiation protection standards rule was one of the earliest pieces of radiation regulation developed by the EPA. The agency has listed six issues for public comment, including risk limits, dose methodology, radionuclide release limits, water resource protection, radioactive waste storage and new nuclear technologies.

The standards…

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And this extract..

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.”

One of the documents obtained by GSN is a presentation that Mike Boyd, an official in the agency’s radiation office, gave about the new protective-action guide during a May meeting of the Paris, France-based Nuclear Energy Agency, a division of the intergovernmental Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The presentation suggests the approach to cleanup described in the new EPA guide “recall[s] the concept of optimization,” a controversial term the Obama administration had stripped from prior, Bush-era drafts of the document, even though “the word may be going out of style.”

http://www.nti.org/gsn/article/epa-documents-raise-doubts-over-intent-new-nuclear-response-guide/

And this extract..

For years, the EPA saw no need to update the regulations, because there were few changes in the industry, the agency explained.

But the EPA said it should update the rules now, “because growing concern about greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels has led to renewed interest in nuclear power,” it said.

The EPA said the new standards would develop rules for disposing of radioactive waste materials and decommissioning old nuclear plants, neither of which were included in the original rules.

The current rules also exclude any references to the transportation of any radioactive materials, the EPA noted.

The new rules may also include provisions that would protect against ground water contamination; the current standard focuses on air pollution.

“Ground water contamination has been identified at a number of nuclear power plants and nuclear fuel cycle facilities,” the EPA noted.

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/197295-epa-seeks-to-modernize-nuclear-standards#ixzz2sIiF44eQ

 

February 3, 2014 - Posted by arclight2011part2 | Uncategorized