The Environmental Protection Agency ( Epa )

around the nuclear site and also for the rest of the country and world because

In the 1970’s there was growing confusion regarding environmental policy due to certain states creating environmental protection laws which were largely ineffective. To ease confusion, fix national guidelines, and monitor and enforce them President Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The EPA functions under three federal departments: the Interior, Agriculture, and Health, Education and Welfare departments. The original role of the EPA was to administrate the Clean Air Act which was enacted to reduce the air pollution caused by vehicles and industry. The EPA has since grown to enforce at least 12 major statutes such as: ocean dumping laws, safe drinking water, insecticides, and asbestos hazards in

The EPA (US Environmental Protection Agency) are helping by conducting cleanups at sites where hazardous chemicals have been released into the environment. These cleanups take place at abandoned waste sights, federal facilities, and where any storage tanks have leaked. Cleanups may also include the reuse of sites and redevelopment of natural habitats. The greatest EPA cleanup program is called the Superfund program. This program locates, investigates and cleans hazardous waste sites throughout the US.

Massachusetts and some other states petitioned the EPA (Environmental protection Agency) requesting them to control radiation of carbon dioxide and supplementary gases that give away to global warming from motor vehicles. MA wanted to control this greenhouse effect by obtaining the Clean Air Act (CAA). This act indicates that congress must monitor any air pollutant that can cause crisis to public health and welfare. EPA rejected the petition, justifying that the CAA does not have the power to tell the EPA to control the greenhouse gas radiation. Even if it did, EPA argued that they had the power to adjourn a decision until more research could be done on the damage and climate change. MA applied the declination of the petition to the

Nuclear Waste The essay “Nuclear Waste” by Ricard A. Muller talks about the controversial matter of the disposure of radioactive waste. Despite the overwhelming concerns of citizens, Richard Muller believes the dangers associated with the transportation and deposit of nuclear waste is not as paramount as the issue may seem. The concepts that seems most alarming to the public are the number of year it takes for the radioactivity of the waste to subside and where it will be stored in the mean time that will not affect their safety. As Muller explains, ”Even after 100,000 years the radiation will still be above 10% of the level it had when it left the reactor.

On Wednesday, March 28, 1979, around 4 a.m., there was a failure in the water pumps at the Three Mile Island in Middletown, Pennsylvania. This led to a partial meltdown of a nuclear power plant. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (now Health and Human Services), the Department of Energy, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania all conducted particular studies of the radiological consequences of the accident. Approximately two million people were estimated to have received an average of one millirem of radiation, and there was a maximum dose to a person who was at the site of 100 millirem (“Backgrounder”). To put this into perspective, an exposure from a single chest X-ray is two to six millirem (“Doses”). However, this put fear into the minds of politicians and others all across the country. What the people do not know, though, is nuclear is better. Instead of using fossil-fuels and wind power, America ought to switch to nuclear energy to power the country because it is safer, cleaner, less expensive, and more reliable than the current ways of producing energy

Later the EPA admitted that people who work at the West Lake Landfill have to be cautious and careful to protect their health. According to Veronica LaCapra’s report, "Landfill Fire Threatens Nuclear Waste Site Outside St. Louis." if the Westlake Landfill’s soil is disarranged, “radioactive dust particles could be released into the atmosphere.” Unfortunately, it may lead to the inhalation of airborne radioactive dust particles. If these particles are inhaled by workers it could seriously harm their health. The EPA suggested that continued monitoring is advised and necessary, due to possible elevated levels of radon in the air at the landfill and the surrounding area. It seems full safety processes must be put into place to reduce harmful dusting to protect everyone from potential exposure during any cleanups.

The primary concern when disposing of nuclear waste and cleaning the facilities that produce it is the duration of half-lives of the elements that make up nuclear waste. One example is Uranium-235, which is used widely by nations that have a nuclear weapons program. U-235 has a half-life of 703,800,000 years. This means that U-235 will take over 700 million years for it to decompose by half. It is estimated that these elements will still be hazardous for ten times their half-lives. At this rate, U-235 will take around 7 billion years for it to become non-threatening to humans. It should be noted that seasons, temperature, or any known solvents will not affect the rate of decay. During the Cold War, very little attention was paid to the high volume of radioactive waste generated and even less to its effects on the environment. U-235 is an extreme example, we still have to contend with low level radioactive waste produced daily by Industry and Medical facilities. Some of the effects on the environment are; groundwater contamination, soil contamination, buried soil and water containing waste, and underground disposal facilities storing large volumes of hazardous, radioactive waste. One such facility was the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository, which was designated in 1987 by the NWPA Amendments, and located on federal land adjacent to the Nevada Test Site (NTS) in Nye County, Nevada some 80 miles Northwest of Las Vegas, Nevada. Congress approved the site in 2002,

Scattered with flowing rivers, lush forests, and everlasting plains, the environment is extraordinary, but is it a place for the government? Since December 2, 1970, the EPA has been restricting the use of our planet and taking our rights away.

Additionally, the environment issues came to be severe effects after the nuclear bombing. An example being, at the plutonium production facilities at the Hanford Site in Washington State, the Atomic Energy Commission released billions of gallons of radioactive material into the Columbia River. Ponding basins where reactor effluent was stored to allow for sufficient radioactive decay were notoriously prone to leakage. Groundwater contamination at Hanford continued to be an intractable problem in the first decade of the 21st century, placing the Columbia at risk of further contamination. In the late 1980s, the U.S. government designated Hanford as a Superfund site. Cleanup of the site is estimated to run well into the billions of dollars, if it can be fully remediated at all. Other nuclear-complex sites

The existing policy for American nuclear waste disposal was set fourth in 1982 with the passing of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA). What followed was an unpredictable series of management and policy design failures that led to the closing of Yucca Mountain as America’s federal nuclear waste repository, costing taxpayers billions and leaving the nation without long term option to deal with nuclear waste. The Act tasked the federal Department of Energy (DOE) with finding and investigating a location for two federal geologic depositories for nuclear waste, one in the West and one in the East, and construction of the facilities. It also named the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), a government organization that regulates the construction

In Denver, so many children since 1952, could have been playing in the streams, rivers, and fields that were later found out to be contaminated with plutonium. The plant was making atomic bombs, and then had to pay for it later. The operator's plead guilty for criminal violations of environmental law. The people had no idea that radioactive waste was leaking into the surrerenung water, and if plutonium is inhaled it can be lodged into the lung tissue and it creates a constant and ongoing source of radiation. There were plumes of radiation all over the Denver metro area. It took almost 10 years and a heavy cost of 7 billion dollars; the estimate was it would take 70 years and 30 billion dollars (Text 1, Page 4-6). Coloradans still don’t believe that our environment has been safe even though the plant closed down the making of weapons since

Yucca Mountain is arid to semiarid today, 170 mm/year of precipitation directly over the repository block and more than 280 mm/year for higher elevations in the north. Due to the isolation, dry temperatures, and mountains, Yucca Mountain was found as a perfect site to hold long term nuclear waste. “Geologic disposal is the strategy defined in the NWPA of 1982, as it is the only technically credible, long-term option that can isolate nuclear waste without continuing active management. The fundamental concepts behind geologic disposal are that the waste can be isolated underground and that the geologic medium itself in conjunction with the waste form and other engineered barriers will isolate the waste” (Endres,2012). Ever since the 1950s residents of southern Nevada have been exposed to radiation due to atomic bomb testing. In 1996, scientists discovered that water was infiltrating Yucca Mountain far faster than they had thought possible, and a chemical called chlorine-36, which is an isotope introduced into environment from atomic bomb testing, was found in test tunnels drug in the mountain. With this new data it is believed that this can lead to many health risks and environmental concerns if nuclear waste spill occurs at Yucca Mountain. Exposure can potentially cause skin cancer, skin tissue damaged, and damage to DNA. With a nuclear

The Superfund Program has provided technical assistance and funding to assess potentially contaminated sites and develop a response. In August of 2007, the Superfund Program compiled a Comprehensive Database and Atlas assessments of all known Uranium mines on the Navajo Nation. At the request of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the EPA, along with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Department of Energy, and the Indian Health Service developed a coordinated Five-Year Plan to address Uranium contamination in consultation with Navajo Nation EPA. In January of 2013, six Federal agencies, in consultation with the Navajo Nation, completed a five-year effort to address Uranium contamination in the Navajo Nation. The effort focused on the most imminent risks to people living on the Navajo Nation. While the last five years represent a significant start in addressing the legacy of Uranium mining, much work remains and the same federal agencies have collaborated to issue a second Five-Year Plan. The purpose of the second Five-Year Plan is to build on the work of the first plan, make adjustments based on information gained during this period, and plan the next steps in addressing the most significant risks to human health and the

On December 2nd of 1970, President Richard Nixon established an organization to solve the growing problem surrounding the state of the environment. The Environmental Protection Agency, commonly known as the EPA, was created with the mission to establish and enforce environmental protection standards, conduct environmental research, provide assistance in eliminating pollution, and recommend new policies for environmental protection to the president. One of the influences that contributed to the development of the EPA was an article in Science magazine. Through his article The Tragedy of the Commons, Garrett Hardin conveyed the amount of damage that humans had caused to the environment. He made it clear that humans will exploit Earth’s natural