The Million-Year Health Standard

Published: November 25, 2005

The Environmental Protection Agency's proposed radiation standard for a planned nuclear waste site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada took a severe battering during a comment period that ended this week. The standard is supposed to protect future residents of the area from hazardous radiation doses for the next million years, but critics, led by the State of Nevada, skewered E.P.A.'s often sloppy justifications and complained bitterly that no other radiation standard now in force would allow the public to receive such high doses.