Abstract :
Having read David Smith´s letter [August, p. 7], I would like to point out that the regulatory limit for off-site public exposures from a nuclear-waste repository is 25 millirems (25 × 10−5 sievert) per year. There also is scientific agreement that the preferred approach of burying separated, solidified, and encapsulated nuclear wastes in reasonably stable geological formations would meet this requirement by a large margin.