Opinion ID: 786772
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Challenges Brought by Nevada and Environmental Petitioners

Text: 39 Before addressing the merits of Nevada's petition, we must consider two jurisdictional issues. See Steel Co. v. Citizens for a Better Env't, 523 U.S. 83, 94-95, 101-02, 118 S.Ct. 1003, 1012-13, 1016, 140 L.Ed.2d 210 (1998) (holding that federal courts must ensure that they have jurisdiction before considering the merits of a case). The first, relating to subject matter jurisdiction, arises because although the Hobbs Act, the jurisdictional statute invoked by all parties, gives courts of appeals exclusive jurisdiction to review orders issued by a host of federal agencies — including the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), the Federal Communications Commission, and the Federal Maritime Commission — the Act nowhere mentions the Environmental Protection Agency. See 28 U.S.C. § 2342 (2000). Even so, we believe that the Act's conferral of jurisdiction over rules issued by the now-defunct AEC gives us jurisdiction to entertain the petitions in this case. 40 The Hobbs Act authorizes courts of appeals to review all final orders of the Atomic Energy Commission made reviewable by section 2239 of title 42. Id. § 2342(4). In turn, section 2239 makes reviewable [a]ny final order [of the Atomic Energy Commission], 42 U.S.C. § 2239(b) (2000), that is entered in any proceeding for the issuance or modification of rules and regulations dealing with the activities of licensees, id. § 2239(a)(1)(A). The AEC's authority to establish environmental standards to protect the public from radiation exposure, however, has since been transferred to EPA, and the AEC has been abolished. See Reorganization Plan No. 3 of 1970, § 2(a)(6), reprinted in 5 U.S.C. App. 1 (2000) (transferring to the EPA Administrator the functions of the Atomic Energy Commission ... administered through its Division of Radiation Protection Standards, to the extent that such functions of the Commission consist of establishing generally applicable environmental standards for the protection of the general environment from radioactive material); 42 U.S.C. § 5814(a) (2000) (abolishing the AEC). Given this transfer of authority, at least three circuits have held that EPA action undertaken pursuant to EPA's AEC-transferred authority is reviewable under the Hobbs Act as if undertaken by the AEC itself. See Watkins, 939 F.2d at 712 n. 4 (stating that EPA's generic health and safety standards for nuclear waste repositories are reviewable under 42 U.S.C. § 2239(b)); NRDC v. EPA, 824 F.2d at 1267 n. 7 (same); Quivira Mining Co. v. United States EPA, 728 F.2d 477, 481-84 (10th Cir.1984) (finding Hobbs Act jurisdiction over EPA regulations addressing radiation releases from uranium fuel cycle operations). Going one step further, this circuit has held that agency action that derives from transferred authority is also reviewable under the Hobbs Act. See Aulenback, Inc. v. Fed. Highway Admin., 103 F.3d 156, 164-65 (D.C.Cir.1997) (holding that the court had Hobbs Act jurisdiction to review Transportation Department rules addressing certain safety requirements because the agency's power to issue those requirements derive[d] in part from its transferred authority and because actions taken pursuant to that transferred authority were subject to Hobbs Act review). This is just such a case. 41 In issuing its Yucca Mountain standards, EPA acted pursuant to authority derived from its AEC-transferred powers. When Congress, acting through EnPA section 801, required EPA to issue Yucca-specific, radiation-protection standards, it built on EPA authority — transferred from the AEC — to promulgate generally applicable standards to protect the public from radiation. See H.R. CONF. REP. NO. 102-1018, at 390 (1992), reprinted in 1992 U.S.C.C.A.N. 2472, 2481 (Section 801 [of EnPA] builds upon [the] existing authority of the [EPA] Administrator to set generally applicable [radiation-protection] standards....). Because EPA's authority to promulgate its Yucca rule thus derives from its AEC-transferred powers, we may consider petitioners' challenge to part 197 under our Hobbs Act jurisdiction. See Aulenback, 103 F.3d at 165. 42 The second jurisdictional issue concerns EPA's claim that neither Nevada's nor the environmental petitioners' constitutional standing is self-evident. Respondent's Br. at 21. To establish Article III standing to sue on behalf of their members, NRDC and the other environmental petitioners must show that (a) [their] members would otherwise have standing to sue in their own right; (b) the interests [they] seek[] to protect are germane to [their] purpose; and (c) neither the claim asserted nor the relief requested requires the participation of individual members in the lawsuit. Hunt v. Wash. State Apple Adver. Comm'n, 432 U.S. 333, 343, 97 S.Ct. 2434, 53 L.Ed.2d 383 (1977). Under the first element of this test, the environmental petitioners must show that at least one of their members meets the irreducible constitutional minimum of standing, i.e., injury-in-fact, causation, and redressability. Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560-61, 112 S.Ct. 2130, 2136-37, 119 L.Ed.2d 351 (1992). The burden on a party challenging an administrative decision in the court of appeals is to show a substantial probability that it has been injured, that the [respondent] caused its injury, and that the court could redress that injury. Rainbow/PUSH Coalition v. FCC, 330 F.3d 539, 542 (D.C.Cir.2003) (internal quotation marks omitted). Moreover, the asserted injury must be both concrete and particularized as well as actual or imminent. Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560, 112 S.Ct. at 2136. 43 To demonstrate standing, the environmental petitioners rely on declarations by several of their members, including one by Ed Goedhart, a member of petitioners Citizen Alert and the Nuclear Information and Resource Service. See Decl. of Ed Goedhart ¶ 1. Goedhart states that he lives and works in Amargosa Valley, Nevada, eighteen miles from Yucca Mountain. Id. ¶ 2. He alleges that EPA's failure to adopt more stringent radiation-protection standards will permit hazardous radionuclides from the buried waste to contaminate his community's ground-water supplies, causing adverse health effects. See id. ¶¶ 2-7. 44 These allegations are more than sufficient to give Goedhart standing to sue in his own right. The claimed injury to his ground-water supply is neither hypothetical nor conjectural. Indeed, EPA itself acknowledges that [t]he boundaries of the town [of Amargosa Valley] include all of the area where the highest potential doses from a repository at Yucca Mountain are anticipated.... Final Background Information Document at 8-13. Although radionuclides escaping from the Yucca repository may not reach Goedhart's community for thousands of years, his injury is actual or imminent, for he lives adjacent to the land where the Government plans to bury 70,000 metric tons of radioactive waste — a sufficient harm in and of itself. See La. Envtl. Action Network v. United States EPA, 172 F.3d 65, 67-68 (D.C.Cir.1999) (holding that an environmental group established constitutional standing where its members lived near a landfill into which an EPA regulation allegedly would permit certain hazardous wastes to be deposited). In addition, this harm is fairly traceable, Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560, 112 S.Ct. at 2136 (internal quotation marks omitted), to EPA's allegedly lax radiation-protection standards, and favorable relief, i.e., requiring EPA to make more stringent each aspect of the rule that petitioners challenge, would likely redress his harm. 45 Nor have we any doubt that Goedhart has prudential standing. To establish prudential standing, a party's grievance must arguably fall within the zone of interests protected or regulated by the statutory provision or constitutional guarantee invoked in the suit. Bennett v. Spear, 520 U.S. 154, 162, 117 S.Ct. 1154, 1161, 137 L.Ed.2d 281 (1997). Goedhart's grievance clearly falls within the Energy Policy Act's zone of interests, for that Act seeks to ensure that DOE operates the Yucca repository safely, i.e., without endangering the lives or health of the surrounding population. See EnPA § 801(a)(1) (directing EPA to promulgate public health and safety standards for protection of the public from releases from radioactive materials). 46 Because the Government does not argue that the environmental petitioners fail either the germaneness or the individual-participation element of associational standing, and because we [too] have [no] reason to believe that [they] fail[] to satisfy [these] latter two requirements, Sierra Club v. EPA, 292 F.3d 895, 898 (D.C.Cir.2002), we conclude that the environmental petitioners have established standing to bring their petition for review. And since only one petitioner requires standing, we need not consider the Government's separate challenge to Nevada's standing. See Military Toxics Project v. EPA, 146 F.3d 948, 954 (D.C.Cir.1998). We thus turn to the merits of Nevada's petition.
47 Nevada first challenges EPA's decision to establish a compliance period that extends only 10,000 years into the future. According to Nevada, the 10,000- year marker violates EnPA section 801(a) and is arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A) (2000). We begin and end with Nevada's EnPA challenge. 48 Section 801(a) of the Energy Policy Act requires EPA to promulgate public health and safety standards for Yucca Mountain based upon and consistent with the findings and recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences. Chartered by Congress during the Civil War, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS or Academy) serves as the federal government's scientific adviser, convening distinguished scholars to address scientific and technical issues confronting society. See NAS REPORT at vi. EnPA directs EPA to contract with NAS to conduct a study to provide findings and recommendations on reasonable standards for protection of the public health and safety from the potential hazards posed by a Yucca Mountain repository. EnPA § 801(a)(2). To undertake the necessary study, NAS convened a committee organized under the auspices of its principal operating arm, the National Research Council. NAS REPORT at vi-vii. That committee retained two consultants, conducted five open meetings to which it invited over fifty scientists and engineers, and reviewed publicly available research compiled by federal, state, and local agencies, among others. Id. at vii-viii. 49 The Academy's work culminated in a 1995 report entitled Technical Bases for Yucca Mountain Standards. With respect to the length of the compliance period, NAS found no scientific basis for limiting the time period of the individual-risk standard to 10,000 years or any other value. Id. at 55. According to the Academy, compliance assessment is feasible for most physical and geologic aspects of repository performance on the time scale of the long-term stability of the fundamental geologic regime — a time scale that is on the order of 10 6 [one million] years at Yucca Mountain. Id. at 6. NAS also explained that humans may not face peak radiation risks until tens to hundreds of thousands of years after disposal, or even farther into the future. Id. at 2. Given these findings — and central to the issue before us — NAS recommend[ed] that compliance assessment be conducted for the time when the greatest risk occurs, within the limits imposed by the long-term stability of the geologic environment. Id. at 6 (emphasis omitted). That said, NAS explained that although the selection of a time period of applicability has scientific elements, it also has policy aspects that we have not addressed, such as the goal of establishing consistent policies for managing various kinds of long-lived, hazardous materials. Id. at 56. 50 Following issuance of the NAS Report, EPA promulgated its draft part 197 standards in which it proposed a 10,000-year compliance period. In so doing, EPA request[ed] comments upon the reasonableness of adopting the NAS-recommended compliance period or some other approach in lieu of the 10,000-year compliance period which we favor.... 64 Fed. Reg. at 46,995. DOE, responding to EPA's request, supported the 10,000-year compliance period, claiming that a significantly longer time period for assessing compliance would be unprecedented, unworkable, and probably unimplementable. Letter from Lake H. Barrett, Acting Director, Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, to United States Environmental Protection Agency 2 (Nov. 1999). By contrast, Nevada submitted comments opposing the 10,000-year marker, urging that EPA adopt a period of compliance covering the time of projected peak doses, as NAS had recommended. See Letter from Robert R. Loux, Executive Director, Office of the Governor, Agency for Nuclear Projects, to United States Environmental Protection Agency 8 (Nov. 23, 1999). 51 After the comment period closed, EPA promulgated its final rule, in which it adopted a 10,000-year compliance period. Expressly acknowledging that NAS had recommended that the compliance period cover the time when the greatest risk of radiation exposure occurs and that the Academy had found it scientifically possible to predict repository performance for approximately one million years, EPA nevertheless concluded that such an approach is not practical for regulatory decisionmaking. 66 Fed. Reg. at 32,097. The agency explained: 52 Despite NAS's recommendation, we conclude that there is still considerable uncertainty as to whether current modeling capability allows development of computer models that will provide sufficiently meaningful and reliable projections over a time frame up to tens-of-thousands to hundreds-of-thousands of years. Simply because such models can provide projections for those time periods does not mean those projections are meaningful and reliable enough to establish a rational basis for regulatory decisionmaking. 53 Id. Moreover, EPA maintained that selecting a compliance period for the individual-protection standard involves both technical and policy considerations.... In addition to the technical guidance provided in the NAS Report, we considered several policy and technical factors that NAS did not fully address, as well as the experience of other EPA and international programs. Id. at 32,098. According to EPA, five considerations guided its decision: (1) the agency uses 10,000 years for programs involving the disposal of other long-lived, hazardous materials, (2) the individual-protection requirements in 40 C.F.R. part 191, EPA's generally applicable nuclear waste disposal standards, use such a time frame, and consistency [is] appropriate because both sets of standards apply to the same types of waste, (3) many international geologic disposal programs use 10,000 years, (4) setting the standard to peak dose times could lead to a period of regulation that has never been implemented in a national or international radiation regulatory program, and focusing on 10,000 years forces more emphasis on features that humans can control such as repository design, and (5) projecting human exposure levels over long periods of time involves great uncertainty. Id. at 32,098-99. On this last point, EPA stated that we believe that NAS might not have fully addressed two aspects of uncertainty, specifically (1) the impact of long-term natural changes in climate and its effect upon choosing an appropriate RMEI, and (2) the range of possible biosphere conditions and human behavior. Id. 54 In the final rule's preamble, EPA also explained why it believed that part 197 complied with EnPA's requirement that the rule be based upon and consistent with NAS's findings and recommendations. Id. at 32,082-84. That mandate, EPA stated, does not bind us absolutely to follow the NAS Report. Instead, we used it as a starting point for this rulemaking.... [W]e do not believe the statute forces our rulemaking to adopt mechanically NAS's recommendations as standards. Id. at 32,083. Thus, because part 197 was guided by the [Academy's] findings and recommendations [in light] of the special role Congress gave it, id., EPA concluded that it had acted in accordance with EnPA's directive. 55 Challenging EPA's determination, Nevada contends that part 197's 10,000-year compliance period deviates from the NAS Report and that EPA therefore failed to promulgate a rule based upon and consistent with NAS's findings and recommendations, as required by EnPA section 801(a). Because Congress has charged EPA with implementing section 801(a) of the Energy Policy Act, we analyze this claim under the two-part test of Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, 104 S.Ct. 2778, 81 L.Ed.2d 694 (1984). See United States v. Mead Corp., 533 U.S. 218, 226-27, 121 S.Ct. 2164, 2170-71, 150 L.Ed.2d 292 (2001). Under Chevron 's first step, we ask whether Congress has directly spoken to the precise question at issue, for if the intent of Congress is clear, that is the end of the matter.... [T]he court, as well as the agency, must give effect to the unambiguously expressed intent of Congress. Chevron, 467 U.S. at 842-43, 104 S.Ct. at 2781-82. If the statute is silent or ambiguous with respect to the specific issue, we proceed to Chevron 's second step, asking whether the agency's interpretation is based on a permissible construction of the statute. Id. at 843, 104 S.Ct. at 2782. At this stage, although we defer to agency statutory interpretations, our judicial function is neither rote nor meaningless, Natural Res. Def. Council, Inc. v. Daley, 209 F.3d 747, 752 (D.C.Cir.2000), and we will reject an interpretation that diverges from any realistic meaning of the statute, id. at 753 (quoting Massachusetts v. Dep't of Transp., 93 F.3d 890, 893 (D.C.Cir.1996)) (internal quotation marks omitted). 56 Beginning at Chevron Step One, then, we ask whether Congress's directive that EPA issue standards based upon and consistent with the findings and recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences is clear and unambiguous. In considering this question, we do not write on a clean slate. In a recent case interpreting the Clean Air Act, we observed that [t]here is no question that the phrase `based on' is ambiguous. Sierra Club v. EPA, 356 F.3d 296, 305-06 (D.C.Cir.2004), amended by No. 03-1084, 2004 WL 877850 (D.C.Cir. Apr. 16, 2004). Although the words based on do not necessarily mean rest solely on,  we concluded, they prohibit actions that abandon[] or supplant[]. Id. at 306. In another Clean Air Act case, we reached a similar conclusion about the phrase consistent with, explaining that this flexible statutory language requires not exact correspondence ... but only congruity or compatibility. Envtl. Def. Fund, Inc. v. EPA, 82 F.3d 451, 457 (D.C.Cir.1996) (per curiam) (describing the phrase consistent with as requiring the court to defer to reasonable agency determinations), amended by 92 F.3d 1209 (D.C.Cir.1996). Likewise, in Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. v. Daley, we held that a statute requiring fishing quotas to be (among other things) consistent with a fishery management plan was ambiguous. 209 F.3d at 754. Because [t]he statute does not prescribe a precise quota figure, we reasoned, there is no plain meaning on this point. Id. ([W]e ... view this case as governed by Chevron Step Two.). Given this case law, we are not free to conclude that section 801(a) clearly and unambiguously answers the precise question before us. 57 Nor can we discern an unambiguous congressional command from EnPA's legislative history. See id. at 752 (Under the first step of Chevron, the reviewing court must exhaust the traditional tools of statutory construction to determine whether Congress has spoken to the precise question at issue. (internal quotation marks omitted)). The Conference Report explains: 58 The Conferees do not intend for the National Academy of Sciences, in making its recommendations, to establish specific standards for protection of the public but rather to provide expert scientific guidance on the issues involved in establishing those standards. Under the provisions of section 801, the authority and responsibility to establish the standards, pursuant to a rulemaking, would remain with the [EPA] Administrator, as is the case under existing law. The provisions of section 801 are not intended to limit the Administrator's discretion in the exercise of his authority related to public health and safety issues. 59 H.R. CONF. REP. NO. 102-1018, at 391, reprinted in 1992 U.S.C.C.A.N. at 2482. Rather than answering the specific question at hand, this discretion-conferring language supports our view that nothing in section 801(a) specifies precisely how EPA must use the NAS Report. 60 For its part, EPA insists that Congress actually intended it to adopt a 10,000-year compliance period. In support of this argument, EPA relies on EnPA section 801(a)(2)(C), which directed the agency to engage NAS to examine whether it is possible to predict the probability that humans will breach Yucca Mountain's engineered or geologic barriers over a 10,000-year period. EPA also points out that at the time Congress enacted EnPA, the First Circuit had upheld a 10,000-year compliance period contained in EPA's generic part 191 standards. See NRDC v. EPA, 824 F.2d at 1292-93. By failing to specify an alternate time frame in the Energy Policy Act, EPA argues, Congress tacitly endorsed 10,000 years. 61 EPA misreads EnPA's contextual clues. Although EnPA mentions 10,000 years in section 801(a)(2), section 801(a)(1) — the provision that requires EPA to issue a Yucca-specific rule - tells the agency exactly how to set any compliance period, i.e., it must be based upon and consistent with NAS's recommendations. In view of this express directive, moreover, Congress's failure to establish a compliance period cannot be viewed as tacit approval of the part 191 time frame. 62 Given section 801's ambiguity, Nevada's challenge turns on whether EPA's 10,000-year compliance period can be reasonably described as based upon and consistent with NAS's findings and recommendations. We think it cannot. It would have been one thing had EPA taken the Academy's recommendations into account and then tailored a standard that accommodated the agency's policy concerns. But that is not what EPA did. Instead, it unabashedly rejected NAS's findings, and then went on to promulgate a dramatically different standard, one that the Academy had expressly rejected. Although section 801's based upon and consistent with standard does not require EPA to walk in lock-step with the Academy, we think it entirely unreasonable for EPA to have acted inconsistently with NAS findings and recommendations. As in Daley, [t]his case presents a situation in which the [agency's action] so completely diverges from any realistic meaning of the [statute] that it cannot survive scrutiny under Chevron Step Two. 209 F.3d at 753. 63 To begin with, there is little question that EPA's 10,000-year compliance period deviates dramatically from the Academy's findings. Most important, NAS unequivocally recommended a standard pegged to the time when radiation doses reach their peak: 64 We believe that compliance assessment is feasible for most physical and geologic aspects of repository performance on the time scale of the long-term stability of the fundamental geologic regime — a time scale that is on the order of 10 6 [one million] years at Yucca Mountain — and that at least some potentially important exposures might not occur until after several hundred thousand years. For these reasons, we recommend that compliance assessment be conducted for the time when the greatest risk occurs, within the limits imposed by long-term stability of the geologic environment. 65 NAS REPORT at 6-7. NAS reiterated this conclusion throughout its report: [W]e recommend ... [t]hat compliance with the standard be measured at the time of peak risk, whenever it occurs, id. at 2 (footnote omitted); we have recommended that the standard for individual risk should apply at times when the peak potential risks might occur, id. at 55-56; we see no technical basis for limiting the period of concern to a period that is short compared to the time of peak risk or the anticipated travel time, id. at 56; [t]he period over which this level of protection should be assessed should extend over the period of duration of hazard potential of the repository, that is, until the time at which the highest critical group risk is calculated to occur, within the limits imposed by the long-term stability of the geologic environment at Yucca Mountain, which is on the order of [one million] years, id. at 67. 66 Not only did NAS recommend that EPA set its compliance period based on peak risk, but it expressly rejected 10,000 years as a proper benchmark: The current EPA standard [in part 191] contains a time limit of 10,000 years for the purpose of assessing compliance. We find that there is no scientific basis for limiting the time period of an individual-risk standard in this way. Id. at 6; see also id. at 55 ([W]e believe that there is no scientific basis for limiting the time period of the individual-risk standard to 10,000 years or any other value.). A 10,000-year limitation, NAS explained, might be inconsistent with protection of public health. Id. at 55. NAS continued: 67 [A]s noted in a previous National Research Council study, EPA's 10,000-year time limit ... makes compliance rather easy. This we do not support because ... we see no valid justification for this time limit.... Th[is] ... calculational approach may seem to simplify licensing, but we do not understand how such an exercise can support the finding, required in licensing, that there be no unreasonable risk to the health and safety of the public. 68 Id. (internal quotation marks omitted) (second and third omissions in original). 69 Describing its recommendation as differing from a 10,000-year standard, NAS went on to state: 70 Perhaps the most significant difference between our recommendations and 40 CFR 191 concerns the time period over which the standard is applicable. In 40 CFR 191, the standard applies for a period of 10,000 years. In our proposal, we have specified that the basis for the standard should be the peak risk, whenever it occurs [within the limits imposed by the long-term stability of the geologic environment]. Based on performance assessment calculations provided to us, it appears that for some reasonable combinations of parameters, peak risks are likely to occur after 10,000 years. 71 Id. at 119 (footnote omitted) (emphasis added); see also id. at 2 (same). 72 EPA's own explanation of its treatment of the NAS Report also reveals that the agency consciously and outrightly rejected the Academy's findings and recommendations. For example, in the final rule's preamble, EPA acknowledged that NAS had found no scientific basis for limiting the time period of the individual-risk standard to 10,000 years or any other value, but  [d]espite NAS's recommendation, it concluded that a 10,000-year standard was appropriate. 66 Fed. Reg. at 32,097 (internal quotation marks omitted) (emphasis added); see also id. (concluding that NAS's recommended peak dose standard is not practical for regulatory decisionmaking, which involves more than scientific performance projections using computer models). 73 This case is quite similar to Daley, where, as we explained above, see supra at 1269, we held that a statute directing that agency fishing quotas be consistent with applicable fishery management plans was not free from ambiguity. See 209 F.3d at 753-54. Because the agency's quota in that case had only an eighteen percent likelihood of achieving its conservation target, we held that it failed Chevron 's Step-Two reasonableness test. Id. Only in Superman Comics' Bizarro world, where reality is turned upside down, we explained, could the [agency] reasonably conclude that a measure that is at least four times as likely to fail as to succeed offers [the requisite degree of] confidence. Id. at 754 (internal quotation marks omitted). So too here. Only in a world where based upon means in disregard of and consistent with means inconsistent with could EPA's adoption of a 10,000- year compliance period be considered a permissible construction of section 801. 74 EPA nevertheless insists that it acted consistently with the Academy's conclusions because it based the 10,000-year compliance period on several policy concerns beyond the ken of NAS's technical expertise. In support of this argument, EPA relies on NAS's acknowledgment that agency standard-setting implicates policy considerations: [W]e note that although the selection of a time period of applicability has scientific elements, NAS stated, it also has policy aspects that we have not addressed. For example, EPA might choose to establish consistent policies for managing risks from disposal of both long-lived hazardous nonradioactive materials and radioactive materials. NAS REPORT at 56 (citations omitted). 75 We think the Academy's statement far too thin a reed on which to find that EPA reasonably interpreted EnPA's based upon and consistent with command. Simply stating that standard-setting has policy aspects cannot transform NAS's statement that we recommend that compliance assessment be conducted for the time when the greatest risk occurs, within the limits imposed by long-term stability of the geologic environment, id. at 6-7 (emphasis omitted), into, as EPA would seemingly have it, we recommend that compliance assessment be conducted for the period that lacks scientific basis but that best meets EPA's policy goals. Furthermore, NAS's conclusion that EPA might choose to establish consistent policies is of little importance here, given that this court — not the Academy — is charged with determining whether EPA has exercised its rulemaking discretion in compliance with EnPA. And although our case law makes clear that a phrase like based upon and consistent with does not require EPA to hew rigidly to NAS's findings, EnPA section 801(a) cannot reasonably be read to allow a regulation wholly inconsistent with NAS recommendations. 76 EPA also claims that it complied with EnPA because it based the 10,000-year compliance period on the Academy's finding that there is no scientific basis for prediction of future states [of human activity], and the limit of our ability to extrapolate with reasonable confidence is measured in decades, or at most, a few hundreds of years. Id. at 55. This statement helps EPA not at all, for NAS nonetheless concluded that despite this uncertainty, limiting the compliance period to 10,000 years was inappropriate. Id. 77 Finally, at oral argument, EPA counsel insisted that part 197 is consistent with NAS's findings because it requires DOE to calculate the peak dose of the reasonably maximally exposed individual that would occur after 10,000 years following disposal but within the period of geologic stability and to include [those] results and their bases in the environmental impact statement for Yucca Mountain as an indicator of long-term disposal system performance. 40 C.F.R. § 197.35; see also Oral Argument Tr. at 32 ([W]e certainly think that the ultimate result was consistent with the NAS recommendations insofar as the projections out to time of peak dose are required to be performed and submitted in the [Environmental Impact Statement].). Although EPA's addition of this provision might well represent a nod to NAS, it hardly makes the agency's regulation consistent with the Academy's findings. NAS recommended that the compliance period extend to the time of peak risk, yet EPA's rule requires only that DOE calculate peak doses and expressly provides that [n]o regulatory standard applies to the results of this analysis. 40 C.F.R. § 197.35; see also 66 Fed. Reg. at 32,096 (The rule does not ... require that DOE meet a specific dose limit after 10,000 years.). 78 In sum, because EPA's chosen compliance period sharply differs from NAS's findings and recommendations, it represents an unreasonable construction of section 801(a) of the Energy Policy Act. Although EnPA's based upon and consistent with mandate leaves EPA with some flexibility in crafting standards in light of NAS's findings, EPA may not stretch this flexibility to cover standards that are inconsistent with the NAS Report. Had EPA begun with the Academy's recommendation to base the compliance period on peak dosage and then made adjustments to accommodate policy considerations not considered by NAS, this might be a very different case. But as the foregoing discussion demonstrates, EPA wholly rejected the Academy's recommendations. We will thus vacate part 197 to the extent that it requires DOE to show compliance for only 10,000 years following disposal. On remand, EPA must either issue a revised standard that is based upon and consistent with NAS's findings and recommendations or return to Congress and seek legislative authority to deviate from the NAS Report. It was Congress that required EPA to rely on NAS's expert scientific judgment, and given the serious risks nuclear waste disposal poses for the health and welfare of the American people, it is up to Congress — not EPA and not this court — to authorize departures from the prevailing statutory scheme. 79 Because EPA's 10,000-year compliance period violates EnPA section 801, we have no need to consider Nevada's alternative argument that the standard is arbitrary and capricious under the APA.
80 Nevada next attacks part 197's controlled area. Part 197 contemplates that the Yucca Mountain disposal system will include not just a repository in which the waste packages are placed, but also a controlled area surrounding the repository. Under the rule, the controlled area may extend five kilometers from the repository in every direction, except that toward the south — the direction in which ground water flows — the area may extend to a specified geographic coordinate that is roughly eighteen kilometers away. See 40 C.F.R. § 197.12; 66 Fed. Reg. at 32,094. 81 The controlled area serves three distinct functions. First, it operates as the natural barrier portion of the disposal system, the land dedicated to isolating and diluting radionuclides released from the waste packages. See 66 Fed. Reg. at 32,117. Second, it designates the area that EPA will make off-limits to human settlement through institutional controls such as signs or guards. Id. Third, and central to Nevada's challenge here, the controlled area's borders establish the maximum distance from the repository that the Energy Department may locate the reasonably maximally exposed individual for purposes of demonstrating compliance with the individual-protection standard, see 40 C.F.R. §§ 197.20-197.21, as well as the greatest distance from the repository that DOE may place the point of compliance for the ground-water-protection standard, see id. §§ 197.30, 197.31(a)(1). Under the individual-protection standard, DOE must show that the RMEI living in the accessible environment, defined as any point outside the controlled area, id. § 197.12, and specifically, above the highest concentration of radionuclides in the plume of contamination, id. § 197.21(a), will incur radiation doses no greater than prescribed by the rule, id. § 197.20. Under the ground-water-protection standard, DOE must show that radiation levels in the representative volume of water, including the highest concentration level in the plume of contamination outside the controlled area, id. § 197.31(a)(1), do not exceed maximum contaminant limits, id. § 197.30. 82 In the final Yucca rule, EPA selected a point approximately eighteen kilometers south of the repository as the presumed location of the RMEI and the ground-water standard's point of compliance. EPA explained that after considering locations ranging from a few kilometers to roughly thirty kilometers from the repository, it selected the eighteen-kilometer point as the RMEI's location for two primary reasons. First, after warning signs and other institutional controls lapse with the passage of time (the Academy was unable to predict how long such controls would last, see NAS REPORT at 106), rural residents — those with the lifestyle traits upon which EPA chose to model its RMEI, see 66 Fed. Reg. at 32,090 — are unlikely to settle farther north because living conditions become less hospitable the closer one gets to the repository. In particular, terrain becomes rougher, and depth to ground water increases. See id. at 32,094. Second, EPA concluded that even if individuals, notwithstanding these conditions, chose to live closer to Yucca Mountain, they would incur less overall exposure than rural residents at eighteen kilometers away, so placing the RMEI at the eighteen-kilometer point would provide greater overall protection than a more northerly location. Id. [E]ven though the ground water nearer the repository could contain higher concentrations of radionuclides, EPA explained, if individuals lived closer to the repository, they would incur lower overall doses. Id. at 32,093. According to the agency: 83 [Such individuals] would be unlikely to withdraw water from the significantly greater depth for other than domestic use, and in the much larger quantities needed for gardening or farming activities because of the significant cost of finding and withdrawing the ground water. It is possible, therefore, for an individual located closer to the repository to incur exposures from contaminated drinking water, but not from ingestion of contaminated food. 84 Id. Based on these findings, EPA concluded, the exposure for an RMEI located approximately 18 [kilometers] south of the repository (where ingestion of locally grown contaminated food is a reasonable assumption) actually would be more conservative than an RMEI located much closer to the repository who is exposed primarily through drinking water. Id. 85 With respect to the ground-water standard's point of compliance, EPA explained: [A]s one gets closer than about 18 [kilometers] to the repository footprint, the depth to water begins to increase dramatically from about 100 [meters] at a distance of 20 [kilometers] to a few hundred meters at a distance of 5 [kilometers]. Given the expectation of future population growth and the precious nature of ground water resources in the area, it is reasonable to assume that a small group may annually extract the representative volume of ground water at a distance slightly closer than 20 [kilometers].... This approach is protective of the ground water resources reasonably anticipated to be accessed in the vicinity of Yucca Mountain. 86 Id. at 32,119-20. 87 Nevada contends that EPA's factual assumptions lack record support and that the agency therefore acted arbitrarily and capriciously in allowing the controlled area's southern boundary to extend eighteen kilometers from the repository. In particular, Nevada argues that the record shows that humans are likely to settle and grow food at locations much closer to the repository and that individuals living nearer to the buried waste will incur greater radiation exposure than those a full eighteen kilometers away. Based on this view of the record, Nevada claims that EPA's controlled area is both irrational and insufficiently protective of public health and safety. We disagree. 88 To begin with, contrary to Nevada's assertion, record evidence supports EPA's finding that humans are unlikely to cultivate crops within the controlled area. The Final Background Information Document, which explains much of the technical basis for EPA's rule, shows not only that costs for drilling water increase as depth to water increases, but also that drilling and pumping water for irrigation purposes at depths exceeding 300 feet is economically infeasible, i.e., that when [c]ombining... pumping cost estimates ... with ... capital cost estimates..., the marginal value of water for irrigation is exceeded at depths to water greater than 300 feet. Final Background Information Document at IV-12; see also id. at IV-10, IV-12 (estimating the costs of drilling wells and pumping water for irrigation purposes at various depth-to-water levels). EPA therefore concluded that accessing water for irrigation is cost-prohibitive at locations closer than eighteen kilometers. In reaching this conclusion, EPA, relying on the Academy's recommendation, found that since it was impossible to predict either human activities or economic imperatives, it would assume current conditions would persist indefinitely. 66 Fed. Reg. at 32,094 ([W]e followed NAS's recommendation to use current conditions to avoid highly speculative scenarios.). Because Nevada does not challenge this odd aspect of EPA's reasoning and because depth to water generally surpasses 300 feet at points closer to the repository than the eighteen-kilometer mark, see Final Background Information Document at 8-33, EPA's conclusion that humans would be unlikely to pursue agricultural activities in such unfavorable terrain seems reasonable to us. 89 We also think it reasonable for the agency to have found that humans will likely choose to settle outside the controlled area. Although the record does show that a community could feasibly settle within the controlled area and use local water for domestic (as opposed to agricultural) purposes, see id. at IV-11 to IV-12, and that institutional controls cannot deter settlement within the controlled area for the entire compliance period, see id. at 8-89, EPA's Final Background Information Document demonstrates that the costs of settling nearer to the repository are substantially higher than establishing a community farther away, see id. at IV-8 to IV-9. In any event, to satisfy the APA's rational-decisionmaking standard, EPA need not prove that humans will never settle within the controlled area; the agency needs only a reasonable basis for believing that they are unlikely to do so. See City of Waukesha v. EPA, 320 F.3d 228, 247 (D.C.Cir.2003) (per curiam) ([W]e will give an extreme degree of deference to the agency when it is evaluating scientific data within its technical expertise. (internal quotation marks omitted)). Indeed, deciding where to locate the RMEI and the ground-water standard's point of compliance involves a complex linedrawing judgment to which we owe great deference. See Sinclair Broad. Group, Inc. v. FCC, 284 F.3d 148, 159 (D.C.Cir.2002) (Where issues involve elusive and not easily defined areas ..., our review is considerably more deferential, according broad leeway to the [agency's] line-drawing determinations. (citation and internal quotation marks omitted)). 90 EPA's conclusion that individuals who could settle closer to the repository will incur less radiation exposure than those living eighteen kilometers away, though seemingly counterintuitive, also finds support in the record. Although ground water nearer to the repository could contain higher radiation concentrations than ground water farther away, see 66 Fed.Reg. at 32,093, well-drilling data in the record and the Energy Department's analysis of relative radiation-exposure levels support EPA's ultimate RMEI-location decision. As discussed above, EPA's well-drilling cost estimates show that individuals who may settle closer to the repository are unlikely to extract water for agricultural purposes. Record data also demonstrate that individuals living closer to the repository who consume smaller quantities of more highly contaminated water (water for drinking alone) will experience less overall exposure than those living farther from the repository who consume greater amounts of less contaminated water (water for both drinking and agriculture). DOE's draft environmental impact statement projects that the mean peak dose rate for an individual at five kilometers, whose radiation intake is through drinking contaminated water alone, will be lower than that for a person at twenty kilometers who consumes contaminated drinking water and contaminated food. See United States Department of Energy, Draft Environmental Impact Statement for a Geologic Repository for the Disposal of Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste at Yucca Mountain, Nye County, Nevada 5-26 to 5-36 (July 1999). 91 Nevada's remaining challenges to EPA's well-drilling data are without merit. Although it is true that EPA found it difficult to reconcile cost figures in a particular set of well-construction cost estimates, Final Background Information Document at IV-2, the agency did not rely on those analyses, resting its conclusions instead on calculations that estimated the overall cost of water based on construction and pumping costs for wells of various depths, see id. (stating that the agency estimated the significance of drilling costs on the overall cost of water ... by estimating the costs of various wells (different uses and depths) from the data available and then calculating the capital cost per acre-foot); see also id. at IV-11 (describing the mathematical equation used to compute water-pumping costs). And despite the State's claim to the contrary, the fact that DOE itself uses two wells within the proposed controlled area to support its Yucca site-investigation activities, see id. at 8-80; 66 Fed. Reg. at 32,123, provides no basis for questioning EPA's reasoning, for how a government agency chooses to allocate public funds tells us little (if anything) about how individuals, motivated by economic and personal considerations, decide where to live. 92 Finally, Nevada contends that the rule's controlled area boundaries violate what the State describes as the nonendangerment provision of the Safe Drinking Water Act. 42 U.S.C. § 300h(b)(3)(C) (2000) (Nothing in this section shall be construed to alter or affect the duty to assure that underground sources of drinking water will not be endangered by any underground injection.). Although conceding both that EPA need not apply the SDWA to ground water within the controlled area and that EPA has imported its SDWA-based, maximum-contaminant-level standards to regulate ground water outside the controlled area, Nevada nevertheless insists that the SDWA compels EPA to draw a smaller controlled area. This argument fails for a simple reason: SDWA standards do not apply to the Yucca Mountain repository. On this score, EnPA could not be clearer: [EPA's Yucca standards] shall be the only [public health and safety] standards applicable to the Yucca Mountain site. EnPA § 801(a)(1); see also H.R. CONF. REP. NO. 102-1018, at 390, reprinted in 1992 U.S.C.C.A.N. at 2481 ([T]he standards established by the authority in this section would be the only such standards for protection of the public from releases of radioactive materials as a result of the disposal of spent nuclear fuel or high-level radioactive waste in a repository at the Yucca Mountain site.). Thus, even assuming that the SDWA applies to nuclear waste disposal at Yucca Mountain, Congress, acting through EnPA, exempted the Nevada repository from that statute. Therefore, the SDWA cannot limit the size of Yucca's controlled area, and because the intent of Congress is clear, that is the end of the matter. Chevron, 467 U.S. at 842, 104 S.Ct. at 2781. 93
94 For its final challenge to part 197, Nevada claims that EPA exceeded its statutory authority by adopting a definition of the term disposal that deviates from the one contained in the NWPA. While the NWPA defines disposal as the emplacement in a repository of high-level radioactive waste, spent nuclear fuel, or other highly radioactive material with no foreseeable intent of recovery, whether or not such emplacement permits the recovery of such waste, 42 U.S.C. § 10101(9) (2000), EPA's rule adds a for as long as reasonably possible qualifier, 40 C.F.R. § 197.12. The rule defines disposal as the emplacement of radioactive material into the Yucca Mountain disposal system with the intent of isolating it for as long as reasonably possible and with no intent of recovery, whether or not the design of the disposal system permits the ready recovery of the material. Id. According to Nevada, the additional for as long as reasonably possible language could be read as requiring only temporary delay of radiation releases with engineered barriers to qualify as `disposal,' mark[ing] a departure from the [c]ongressional objective in the NWPA to base repository siting primarily on the principle of long-term geologic isolation. Nev. Br. at 2. 95 Nevada's claim fails, again for a simple reason: EnPA, the statute pursuant to which EPA promulgated part 197, does not require the agency to use NWPA definitions. See EnPA § 801(a)(1) (requiring EPA to promulgate standards to govern Yucca Mountain [n]otwithstanding other authority of the agency to issue generally applicable standards); see also id. § 801(a)(3) (stating that only EnPA, rather than any other authority of the Administrator to set generally applicable standards for radiation protection, applies to the Yucca Mountain site). Rather, EnPA is silent as to the meaning of disposal, and Nevada has failed to show that in filling that statutory gap, EPA acted unreasonably. See Chevron, 467 U.S. at 843, 104 S.Ct. at 2782 (stating that administering a congressionally created program requires the making of rules to fill any gap left, implicitly or explicitly, by Congress). 96