The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) role is to establish the public health and safety standards for high-level waste disposal; the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) licenses and regulates the repository, using EPA's standards as the compliance measure; the Department of Energy (DOE) constructs and operates the repository. On June 13, 2001, EPA issued a final Health and Safety Standard for the Yucca Mountain High-Level Radioactive Waste Repository. The State of Nevada, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) each challenged different aspects of the rule. The proposal retained the dose limits of the 2001 standard for the first 10,000 years but proposed a higher annual dose of 350 mrem/yr for the period of 10,000 years through 1 million years. Those in favor of the proposal focused on the unprecedented time frames and the reasonableness of drawing comparisons with natural levels of radioactivity; opponents claimed that the proposal violated EPA's basic principles of public health protection and was designed specifically to allow the facility to be built. The final 2008 regulation maintains this level for the first 10,000 years. Conclusion

Now that EPA has issued the final health and safety standard, attention will shift to the licensing process and the many technical and policy issues to be addressed in that context. As Congress continues to oversee the Yucca Mountain repository program, it will face issues related to whether DOE's technical work is sufficient to demonstrate compliance with EPA's standard and other safety issues surrounding storage and transportation of spent nuclear fuel and high level radioactive waste to the facility should it be licensed. Some have argued that it would be a better public policy choice to continue to store nuclear waste on-site at the power plants where it is produced while continuing to search for as a safer, more cost-effective solution to permanent disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level nuclear waste. A larger issue is how will the continuing controversy over the Yucca Mountain Project affect the U.S. nuclear power industry and its role in broader national energy policy.
On September 30, 2008, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued the long-awaited revision to its 2001 Public Health and Safety Standard for the proposed Yucca Mountain deep geologic repository for high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel. While the issuance of the standard allows the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to issue its final conforming standards and move forward toward a final license decision for the facility, EPA's standard raises several unprecedented regulatory issues and is likely to be further challenged in court. EPA's final regulation represents the first time the federal government has attempted to regulate public health far into the future, for a period of up to 1 million years. The continued prospect of legal challenges creates an uncertain atmosphere around the licensing process. It has been argued that the government's difficulty promulgating a legally defensible public health and safety standard for the Yucca Mountain repository has far-reaching impacts on the nuclear industry and the viability of nuclear power as a long-term component of the United States' energy strategy.
Permanent disposition of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste has been the subject of substantial controversy for several decades. The creation of a deep geologic repository for this type of waste has been an element of U.S. nuclear policy since the early 1980s. The technical, legal, and policy challenges have delayed development of a repository and created an uncertain environment for high-level nuclear waste management in the United States.
Congress has held several hearings in the past few years focusing on the administration's progress toward finalizing the health and safety standard, the technical soundness of the Department of Energy's (DOE's) design for the facility, the relationship of the project to broader energy policy, and transportation safety issues for waste packages eventually sent to the facility, among other issues. Funding for the program has also been controversial.