&EPA
Unrted States
Environmental Protector
Agency
Air Ana Radiation
(6602-J)
4G2-F-93-QG8
December 1993
ENVIRONMENTAL
FACT SHEET
Final Amendments To Environmental Radiation
For The And
Of Fuel, High-level And
Transuranic (40CFR Part 191)
INTRODUCTION
The Environmental Protection Agency -
(EPA) regulates the release of radioactivity
from the management, storage, and disposal of
spent nuclear fuel and other radioactive wastes
in order to protect public health and the
environment from the harmful effects of ~
radiation exposure. On December 3, 1993,
the EPA Administrator signed the amendments
to its 40 CFR Pan 191 radioactive waste
standards. "Hie standards limits on
of radiation from the management,
storage, and disposal of spent nuclear fuel and
high-level and transuranie radioactive wastes.
Sources of spent nuclear fuel include
fuel discharged from commercial nuclear
power and nuclear defense production
reactors, High-level radioactive waste is
created when spent nuclear fuel is reprocessed
in order to recover unflssiotted uranium and
plutonium for use in weapons programs.
Current plans envision it mixed with a
form of glass. Most transuranie waste
consists of that have become
contaminated during activities with
the production of nuclear weapons, e.g., rags,
equipment, tools, md contaminated organic or
inorganic
These will apply to the
storage, and disposal of
radioactive at the Waste Isolation Pilot
Plant, which the Department of Energy is
developing in New Mexico, They will not
apply, however, to disposal of radioactive
waste at the proposed Yucca Mountain,
Nevada repository, according to the Waste
Isolation Pilot Plant Land Withdrawal Act.
Yucca Mountain will be addressed in a
separate set of standards as required by the
Energy Policv Act of 1992.
The amendments address only two
disposal provisions of a larger set of standards
for the management, storage, and disposal of
radioactive wastes. The Agency originally
issued the entire set of standards in 1985,
Following a legal challenge to the standards,
the court directed EPA to reconsider the
disposal provisions. The court left the
provisions dealing with management and
storage of the wastes intact,
The disposal standards consist of four
requirements that are designed to set limits on
the of radiation that may result from
the disposal of the wastes. The four types of
requirements are; Containment Requirements;
Assurance Requirements; Individual Protection
Requirements; and Ground Water Protection
Requirements.
THE
In the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant Land
Withdrawal Act of 1992 LWA),
Congress all disposal that
the court had not found fault with, i.e., all but
the Individual Requirements and the Ground
Water Protection Requirements; EPA's
amendments only those two disposal
provisions.
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