Opinion ID: 786772
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: 10,000-Year Compliance Period

Text: 167 Nevada next alleges that NRC breached its duty under the AEA and the NWPA to safeguard the public health and safety and arbitrarily and capriciously limited the period for evaluating the repository's performance to 10,000 years following the placement of waste there. According to Nevada, NRC chose — based on political realities rather than hard science — to assess the repository's performance only for the period preceding the time the repository will pose the greatest health risk to future generations, ignoring the advice of experts that there are no technical impediments to evaluating the repository's performance for a much longer period as well as its own recognition that such an evaluation is feasible. Nevada claims that it is unreasonable for NRC to require DOE to compute the peak dose of radiation much further out but for NRC not to consider the repository's performance at that time, claiming that the uncertainties related to human behavior and exposure pathways in predicting the repository's performance during the 10,000 years following waste placement can be addressed as well in assessing its performance thereafter. Nevada additionally faults NRC's decision to confine its evaluation of the repository's performance to 10,000 years because, Nevada claims, NRC knows that a reasonably maximally exposed individual will likely receive a peak dose of radiation that exceeds NRC's and EPA's limits. Petitioners' Br. at 59. 168 In its proposed rule, NRC named three factors in proposing the 10,000-year compliance period: (1) it correspond[ed] to the time period when the waste is inherently most hazardous; (2) it is sufficiently long, such that a wide range of conditions will occur which will challenge the natural and the engineered barriers, providing a reasonable evaluation of the robustness of the geologic repository; and (3) it is consistent with other regulations involving geologic disposal of longlived hazardous materials, including radionuclides. 64 Fed. Reg. at 8647. In the Supplemental Information accompanying part 63 in its final form, NRC used the same three factors as the basis for adopting a 10,000-year compliance period. See 66 Fed. Reg. at 55,760. In addition, in rejecting NAS's recommendation that the time over which compliance should be assessed should include the time when greatest risk occurs, within the limits imposed by the stability of the geologic system, NRC acknowledged that its judgment involved policy as well as technical considerations. Id. at 55,759. It explained: 169 The fact that it is feasible to calculate performance of the engineered and geologic barriers making up the repository system for periods much longer than 10,000 years does not mean that it is possible to make realistic or meaningful projections of human exposure and risk, attributable to releases from the repository, over comparable time frames. 170 Id. at 55,760. NRC therefore concluded that for periods approaching one million years, as NAS had suggested, significant climatic and even human evolution would almost certainly occur rendering it all but impossible to make useful and informed assumptions about human behaviors and exposure pathways. Id. at 55,760. 171 NRC contends that Nevada waived its AEA claim, see Respondent's Br. at 26, but we need not decide the waiver issue or the merits of the State's challenge to NRC's choice of a 10,000-year compliance period now. In light of NRC's obligation under EnPA to maintain licensing criteria that are consistent with the public health and safety standards promulgated by EPA, see EnPA § 801(b)(1); see also 64 Fed. Reg. at 8647 (Should EPA issue final standards for Yucca Mountain ... that specify a different compliance period, the NRC will amend its criteria at 10 CFR Part 63, as necessary, to comply with EnPA requirements for consistency with final EPA standards.), and our holding above vacating EPA's selection of a 10,000-year period for assessing compliance with its public health and safety standards, see Op. supra at II.B.2, we likewise vacate NRC's identical compliance period in part 63 and direct NRC to reconsider the period on remand once EPA has complied with our opinion. 172