CRS Report for Congress, EPA's Final Health and Safety Standard for Yucca Mountain

On September 30, 2008, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued the long-awaited revision to its 2001 Public Health and Safety Standard for the proposed Yucca Mountain deep geologic repository for high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel. While the issuance of the standard allows the Nuclear<br/>Regulatory Commission (NRC) to issue its final conforming standards and move forward toward a final license decision for the facility, EPA’s standard raises several unprecedented regulatory issues and is likely to be further challenged in court. EPA’s final regulation represents the first time the federal government has attempted to regulate public health far into the future, for a period of up to 1 million years. The continued prospect of legal challenges creates an uncertain atmosphere around the<br/>licensing process. It has been argued that the government’s difficulty promulgating a legally defensible public health and safety standard for the Yucca Mountain repository has far-reaching impacts on the nuclear industry and the viability of nuclear power as a long-term component of the United States’ energy strategy. <br/>Permanent disposition of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste has been the subject of substantial controversy for several decades. The creation of a deep geologic repository for this type of waste has been an element of U.S. nuclear policy since the early 1980s. The technical, legal, and policy challenges have delayed development of a repository and created an uncertain environment for high-level nuclear waste management in the United States.<br/>Congress has held several hearings in the past few years focusing on the administration’s progress toward finalizing the health and safety standard, the technical soundness of the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) design for the facility, the relationship of the project to broader energy policy, and transportation safety<br/>issues for waste packages eventually sent to the facility, among other issues. Funding for the program has also been controversial.