Nuclear agency proposes deregulating disposal of some US radioactive waste

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is facing protests after proposing that low-level radioactive waste be disposed of in commercial landfills not explicitly designed to hold it, rather than at licenced radioactive waste sites. The NRC’s proposal, issued in March, declares that the agency’s ‘intent’ is to limit this deregulation to ‘very low level radioactive wastes’, but Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (Peer) states that the actual proposal allows doses to the public equivalent to more than 900 chest x-rays over a lifetime, with a cancer risk 20 times higher than the upper end of the US Environmental Protection Agency’s acceptable risk range.