Nuclear Waste and the Distant Future: Regulation of Nuclear Hazards Must be Consistent with Rules Governing Other Hazardous Materials and Must Balance Its Risks Against Those Linked to Other Energy Sources‪.‬

Although most of the radioactive material generated by nuclear energy decays away over short times ranging from minutes to several decades, a small fraction remains radioactive for far longer time periods. Policymakers, responding to public concern about the potential long-term hazards of these materials, have established unique requirements for managing nuclear materials risks that differ greatly from those for chemical hazards. Although it is difficult to argue against any effort to protect public safety, risk management will be most effective when each risk is evaluated in the context of other risks and balanced against the benefits produced by the regulated activity. Applying extremely stringent standards to one type of risk while other risks are regulated at a lower standard does not improve overall public safety. Similarly, foregoing a socially and economically valuable activity in order to limit relatively small future risk is not a sensible tradeoff. Therefore, developing an effective risk policy for nuclear power and radioactive waste requires looking at how the government regulates all hazardous waste and at the relative health and environmental effects of nuclear power as compared with those of other energy sources. A key regulatory decision for the future of nuclear power is the safety standard to be applied in the licensing of the radioactive waste depository at Yucca Mountain (YM), Nevada. In 1992, Congress passed the Energy Policy Act, directing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to promulgate site-specific standards for the YM nuclear waste repository project. Furthermore, Congress stipulated that these standards be consistent with the findings and recommendations of the 1995 National Research Council report Technical Bases for Yucca Mountain Standards (commonly called the "TYMS report").