EPA Poised to Regulate Nuclear Waste Disposal for a Million Years

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is preparing to issue a regulation that will govern the disposal of power plant nuclear waste in the United States for the next 1 million years.
A million years is pretty far beyond the usual scope of EPA regulations.
"This will be the only rule that applies for such a long duration into the future," said Elizabeth Cotsworth, the EPA director of radiation and indoor air, in an interview with National Public Radio. "Most EPA rules apply for the foreseeable future -- five or six generations. This rule is for basically 25,000 generations."
Why is the EPA Issuing a Regulation for 1 Million Years?
The march toward a million-year regulation for nuclear waste disposal began in 2002, after Congress and President Bush approved plans to store power plant nuclear waste material at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. With that decision, the EPA was charged with setting building codes and other regulations for the repository that would cover the next 10,000 years.

Chernobyl Nuclear Accident

Date and Time of the Chernobyl Nuclear Accident:

The Chernobyl nuclear accident occurred on Saturday, April 26, 1986, at 1:23:58 a.m. local time.

Location of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station:

The V.I. Lenin Memorial Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station was located in Ukraine, near the town of Pripyat, which had been built to house power station employees and their families. The power station was in a wooded, marshy area near the Ukraine-Belarus border, approximately 18 kilometers northwest of the city of Chernobyl and 100 km north of Kiev, the capital of Ukraine.