WASHINGTON - Monday marked the end of an almost four-month comment period on the standards for the Yucca Mountain project. The agency has to create a new standard after a federal appeals court threw out the existing ones last year.

The EPA received at least 120 written comments, according to its Web site.

As expected, those who support and oppose the standard expressed their thoughts, although those against it have different stances on what is wrong with it.

The agency proposed a two-tiered standard. One tier maintains a 15-millirem standard for up to 10,000 years and the second limits exposure to 350-millirem per year for 10,000 to 1 million years for those living in a certain area around Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Yucca critics, including state officials, strongly oppose the standard for a number of reasons. They claim the proposed rules do not satisfy what the court ordered last July, do not protect health and safety of future Nevadans and is written in a way to automatically let the mountain "pass."

But some opposed the standard because of the 1 million year time frame, saying it was ridiculous to try to regulate something that far into the future.

"I find the extension of the time frame for the Yucca Mountain rules to 1 million years to be absolutely preposterous," wrote Frank A. Albini, a retired research professor of mechanical engineering at Montana State University, Bozeman.

"The rules should apply no longer than the current life of the nation, about 200 years. By then, the people of the U.S., if such still exists, will probably not even be able to read, much less interpret, the rules. This is silliness in the extreme."

Others rejected the Yucca Mountain project outright, with some suggesting their own alternatives for storing nuclear waste, including creating "atomic batteries" that future generations could use to generate electricity or putting waste in steel containers wrapped in concrete with a sign in several languages saying to not go inside the mountain.

Comments submitted by Friday ranged from barely legible handwritten pages to quick e-mails to carefully-worded typed documents. A few contained profanity. And some included warnings on what would happen if Yucca opened, while others warned what would happen if it did not open.

It is not clear when the agency will finish reviewing the comments and issue its final rule.

The last time the agency proposed a radiation standard, it took two years to take public comment, respond and make the final standard public.