Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 26, 1990 TAG: 9007260590
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A/1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The documents were obtained by a congressional panel that is questioning the decision, announced last month, that the NRC no longer regulate a wide range of low-level radioactive materials from nuclear power plants, laboratories and hospitals.
NRC commissioners were called to defend the action today before the House Interior energy and environment subcommittee.
Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the subcommittee's chairman, said the NRC policy "has the potential to endanger the public health" and "is an open invitation to abuse by unscrupulous operators" who want to dump radioactive materials in ordinary landfills.
Under the new policy, such low-level wastes as gloves, clothing, lab equipment and even buildings and equipment at nuclear power plants can be disposed of as if they were normal garbage if radiation doses are below a certain level.
The commission plans to consider exempting various wastes on a case-by-case basis as requests for exemptions are submitted by industry under the new policy guidelines.
NRC Chairman Kenneth Carr has argued that the policy change represents a way to save lives because federal and state regulators will be able "to spend our resources on threats that are more important."
But representatives from the EPA, a half-dozen members of Congress and a number of state radiation control officials were expected to testify against the NRC action, announced on June 27.
According to documents obtained by Miller's subcommittee, the EPA as well as key NRC staff members expressed concern repeatedly during the two years the new policy was being debated that too many wastes are being deregulated.
The NRC decision would exempt from special control wastes that subject individuals to radiation doses of less than 10 millirem per year - half the level of a normal chest X-ray.
"We believe that is too high a level [of exposure] for a blanket deregulation criteria and is not protective of the public health," the EPA's Office of Radiation Programs concluded in a briefing paper submitted to the subcommittee.
The EPA maintained that the 10 millirem cutoff for regulatory action could result in as many as three additional cancer deaths for every 10,000 people exposed. "Numerous standards established by the EPA, including those for drinking water, set upper limits of risk at lower levels," it said.
According to internal NRC memos and other documents, key commission staff members also expressed strong reservations about the 10 millirem cutoff level as the new policy was debated in 1988 and 1989.
A staff report in June 1988 urged that only wastes with radiation doses of 1 millirem per year be deregulated. Among those who objected to the 10 millirem cutoff was Robert Bernero, acting director of the NRC's Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, according to the documents.
Bernero in one memo to his NRC superiors expressed concern about the health effects to individuals who may be subject to numerous exposures of such wastes and the long-term effect on such materials on the waste stream.
But the objections from Bernero and other staffers were overruled by senior NRC officials, the documents indicated.
by CNB