Creating a Regulatory and Legal Foundation

This chapter describes how the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the NRC engaged in a bureaucratic pas de deux . The former agency had to establish limits on the radioisotopes that might be released from a repository. The latter had to specify how those limits might be imposed when licensing the construction of a disposition facility. The regulations called for studies of multiple potential repository locations in a variety of hydrogeologic formations. They also mandated that the studies involve in situ investigations of the proposed repository horizon. The chapter also details the passage of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act in President Ronald Reagan&s;s administration. Starting with the negotiations in the House Interior Committee and concluding with the amended bill&s;s approval by a voice vote in the Senate, it discusses in some detail how the four bargains were struck.