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Monday, June 3rd, 2013

EPA Dramatically Weakens Radiation Protection

Author:    
Source:     Committee to Bridge the Gap
Publication Date:     2-Jun-13
 Link: EPA Dramatically Weakens Radiation Protection
Stephan:   Yet another example the corruption of our regulatory agencies. After Fukushima I predicted this would happen. The reality of nuclear power is such that when it goes wrong it can go wrong in terrible long-enduring ways. So the corporate states that own these death traps, want protection of their profits, and reduced liability. And that is what they are getting.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is publishing in the Federal Register today controversial new Protective Action Guides (PAGs) for responding to radioactive releases. EPA says it solicits public comment but is nonetheless making the PAGs immediately effective.

The new PAGs eliminate requirements to evacuate people in the face of high projected thyroid, skin, or lifetime whole body doses; recommend dumping radioactive waste in municipal garbage dumps not designed for such waste; propose five options for drinking water, which would dramatically increase the permitted concentrations of radioactivity in drinking water, by as much as 27,000 times, compared to EPA’s current Safe Drinking Water Act limits; and suggest markedly relaxing long-term cleanup standards.

‘In essence the government is now saying nuclear power accidents could produce such widespread contamination and produce such high radiation levels that the government should abandon efforts to clean it up and instead force people to live with radiation-induced cancer risks orders of magnitude higher than ever considered acceptable,’ said Daniel Hirsch, president of Committee to Bridge the Gap.

The PAGs are intended to guide the response to nuclear power reactor accidents (like Fukushima in Japan, Chernobyl in Ukraine and Three Mile Islandin the U.S.), ‘dirty bomb’ explosions, radioactive releases from […]

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