Dr. Polly C. Wonk's Federal Forum

Dr. Polly C. Wonk is IEER's esteemed consultant who regularly writes a column of advice to Washington officialdom. Dr. Wonk welcomes short letters from those in the government concerned with nuclear-weapons related issues. Letters should discuss good, bad, or ugly aspects of current policy and what ought to be done to improve the latter two.

Two government agencies recently teamed up to develop guidelines for decommissioning radioactively contaminated sites. In late 1994 the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued draft regulations for decommissioning the facilities at which its licensees use radioactive materials. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will also issue its own draft standards in early 1995 that will apply to Department of Energy nuclear weapons plants and all other radioactively contaminated sites not licensed by the NRC. Since the NRC and EPA are working together to develop these rules, the NRC standards are likely to heavily influence the EPA rules.

There are a number of serious problems with the NRC draft regulations. These deficiencies are so fundamental that I urge that the NRC to go back to the drawing board and publish draft regulations. If the NRC fails to do that, then the EPA should reject the NRC draft proposals as fundamentally flawed and override them.

What's so bad about the draft regulations? Read on for some of the highlights.

Risk Minimization: The draft regulations do not integrate risks from non-radioactive and radioactive hazardous materials. Moreover, they inappropriately ignore non-cancer risks, especially from non-radioactive hazardous materials.

Grandfather Clause: The grandfather clause exempting sites that fall under the Site Decommissioning Management Plan (SDMP) does not meet minimal requirements for the protection of populations living nearby. Even worse, many sites where there are not yet approved decommissioning plans would also be exempted.

ALARA Requirements: The requirement that doses be kept as low as reasonably achievable (ALARA) has no numerical guideline incorporated within the regulation itself. This is a step backwards from the previous draft circulated to participants in the NRC's workshops on decommissioning regulations.

Exposure Limits: The proposed exposure limits are too high. The limit of 15 millirem per year with a suggested ALARA dose of 3 millirem per year are, for instance, fifty percent above the corresponding British limits of 10 millirem and 2 millirem.

Release of Documents: The proposed regulations do not require that the licensee make public all relevant documents about environmental releases and contamination that occurred during the period of facility operation and the period of decommissioning. This is a serious omission since cancer and other adverse health risks from future exposure add to risks from past exposure.

Fund for Environmental Monitoring: The draft regulations do not require licensees to establish a fund for environmental monitoring and public education whenever there is residual radioactivity at the time of license termination. So long as doses are in addition to natural background, there must be a fund for monitoring and public education.

Compliance with Drinking Water Standards: The proposed rule does not require strict compliance with EPA standards for groundwater supplies.

Unlike most Washington pundits, I prefer to give concrete suggestions to remedy deficient policies like the draft regulations. I recommend that, at a minimum, the following changes be made to the decommissioning standards:

Explicit analyses of the cost, risk, and technical feasibility of clean-up to background should be required as part of the rule.
A guideline of a cancer risk of one part in one million per year should be set under the rule of keeping exposures as low as reasonably achievable (ALARA). This limit should include all cancer risks from residual radioactivity, residual carcinogenic non-radioactive materials, and on-site waste disposal. If contamination is due to radionuclides alone, then the annual radiation dose corresponding to this risk would be about 2 millirem per year (using current EPA and NRC risk coefficients). This is the ALARA level in British standards. Chemicals known to pose non-cancer risk, such as risk of damage to the reproductive system, should be explicitly listed in the regulations.
All plant documents relating to health and environmental issues from the licensees' operations as well as from decommissioning activities should be required to be made public prior to license termination.
A fund for environmental monitoring and community education controlled by the community (for example by the local government) should be required in all cases where there is demonstrable residual contamination above background, even if such contamination corresponds to levels that are below maximum limits set for unrestricted use of the site after license termination.
Sites for which no decommissioning plan has been approved as of the January 1, 1995 should not be exempted from the rule. Licensees that have approved decommissioning plants as of December 31, 1994 should be required to show that conforming to the new rules would not cause irreparable harm to them financially. If not, additional clean-up activities to meet the new rules should be undertaken. In any case they should be required to set up an environmental monitoring and public education fund.
Strict compliance with EPA groundwater standards (40 CFR Part 141) should be required.

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Last updated: August, 1996