What’s the half-life of a government agency? We’ll get the chance to find out. Or rather, our descendants will get to find out. Or whatever we evolve into, if that’s what you belive, will eventually find out:
WASHINGTON (AP)–The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is proposing revised radiation exposure limits for a proposed nuclear waste dump in Nevada that the agency believes will safeguard the public for 1 million years, agency officials said Tuesday.
The revised proposed standard is intended to satisfy a court decision a year ago that said the EPA’s initial requirements were inadequate. The ruling threatened to cripple the project at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, unless the EPA developed new rules.
The proposal was discussed by government officials speaking on condition of anonymity because the decision ws being announced by the agency later Tuesday.
One million years. Does the Yewnited States Gummint really think it’s going to be in business that long? If it isn’t, who gets sued if, say, radioactive containment fails 400,000 or 750,000 years from now? Will there even be a “public” that needs to be protected 1 million years hence? How on earth does anyone plan rationally for ten years from now, or a century, much less 1 million years in the future. It’s so delightfully absurd.
However, I will not bet against the EPA. It’s very likely that they will still be business an eon or two from now, writing rules, crafting regulations and imposing fines. If anything could last a million years, it would a regulatory agency of the US federal gummint.
11:04 am on August 9, 2005
