Thursday, July 21, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

YUCCA MOUNTAIN: Another official to leave project

Subpoenas in e-mail issue signed, sent to Energy Department

WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department's licensing director for Yucca Mountain has resigned, the second senior manager to leave the nuclear waste project in the past month, DOE officials confirmed Wednesday.

Joseph Ziegler submitted his resignation last week citing personal reasons, DOE spokesman Allen Benson said. His last day is July 26, employees were told in an e-mail.

Ziegler, who worked in Las Vegas, was director of license application and strategy, the office responsible for preparing licensing materials to be filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in support of DOE's request to build a Nevada nuclear waste repository.

Yucca license preparations have been marked by delays, however, that have postponed an anticipated application date from last December until this December and possibly later.

At an hearing before NRC administrative judges on Tuesday, an attorney for DOE said the department may need even more time, perhaps up to six months, to reformat sets of electronic documents to a required standard for a licensing database.

In a follow-up Wednesday, however, DOE attorney Donald Irwin said the department is still working out a schedule and he could not pinpoint possible delays.

Ziegler's departure from Yucca Mountain comes two weeks after the announced transfer of John Mitchell, the president of the project's operating company Bechtel SAIC. Bechtel said it routinely transfers managers after two or three years.

Benson maintained the turnover among senior managers does not signal Yucca Mountain is in turmoil.

"People at that level move and there's nothing unusual about that," Benson said. "Joe Ziegler was here about five years or so and after five years of a rather intense amount of work, that is not unusual."

Bob Loux, a Yucca Mountain critic and executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, shrugged at Ziegler's departure.

"My sense of things is that they are so far away from having an actual license application that it doesn't even matter," Loux said. "They will probably just have someone else take his place."

Meanwhile Wednesday in Congress, a House committee chairman followed through on a threat to subpoena Yucca Mountain documents held by the Energy Department.

Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., signed subpoena documents that were issued to Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman.

The subpoenas order DOE to deliver by Friday 10 categories of documents including personnel and research records of scientists tied to e-mail messages that suggest quality assurance documentation may have been falsified.

Also subpoenaed were communications between DOE and its contractor, and a copy of a draft repository license application.

Davis is chairman of the House Government Reform Committee. A federal worker subcommittee headed by Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., is conducting an investigation of the e-mails.

Porter said the subpoenaed documents "are just one more piece, an integral part of getting information. Unfortunately we're having to force (DOE) to hand them over."

The Energy Department was reviewing the subpoena, spokesman Craig Stevens said. DOE officials say they have resisted because of the likelihood Porter would publicize documents that could threaten repository licensing.