Nevada Officials Slam Proposed Yucca Mountain Radiation Standard
Nevada officials have threatened another lawsuit to challenge the Environmental Protection Agency's newly recommended radiation exposure cap at the nuclear waste repository proposed to be built beneath Yucca Mountain, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
EPA, responding to a 2004 federal appeals court decision, on Aug. 9 announced a proposed radiation limit extending up to 1 million years in the future at the Yucca Mountain site. In July 2004, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the 10,000-year radiation cap that EPA proposed in 2001 wasn't consistent with recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences.