Tuesday, March 29, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

YUCCA MOUNTAIN: Falsification suspicions spur hearings

Senate, House sessions in April to focus on possibility that scientific studies for nuclear waste project are suspect

WASHINGTON -- Congress is broadening its hearings on Yucca Mountain after disclosures that quality-assurance documents for the proposed nuclear waste repository might have been falsified.

Leaders of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee announced Monday they have scheduled an April 7 hearing on the Nevada nuclear waste site. A House subcommittee led by Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., is preparing for an April 5 hearing.

The Senate committee chairman is Pete Domenici, R-N.M., an influential voice on nuclear issues who aides said is open to examining other options for nuclear waste storage while the Yucca Mountain Project is mired in delays.

Domenici spokeswoman Angela Harper said the committee is compiling a witness list and defining the scope of its inquiry.

In the House, Porter has called on the Energy Department to provide copies of an estimated 20 e-mails in which a U.S. Geological Survey hydrologist suggested that some quality-assurance documents related to climate studies and water infiltration to the repository level had been falsified.

The March 16 disclosure has prompted at least three investigations at the Energy Department and the Department of Interior and has provided critics of the nuclear waste program with fresh ammunition to challenge the project.

Gov. Kenny Guinn and Attorney General Brian Sandoval are among Nevada representatives scheduled to testify before the House subcommittee.

The U.S. Geological Survey work accounted for only a part of a broader DOE analysis, the industry newsletter Nuclear Fuel reported Monday citing USGS and an unidentified source. The source told the newsletter the work in question did not affect the repository's safety calculations.

But others have said that the issue of water travel through the mountain is crucial and that the disclosure raises new credibility problems for the Energy Department.

A troubled quality-assurance program has been considered an Achilles heel for the Yucca program, and Nevada officials were weighing whether to highlight information that more than a half dozen geologists received copies of the e-mails but did not report them.

Also Monday, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee gave a boost to the proposed repository, saying that Yucca Mountain remains "the safest option" for disposing of nuclear fuel.

Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, stepped into a dispute involving a National Academy of Sciences report that questioned the safety of radioactive spent fuel stored in 45-foot-deep pools of water at nuclear reactor sites.

"Temporary storage in spent-fuel pools will never be as secure at disposal in Yucca Mountain," Barton said.

"The National Academy of Sciences report is one more argument for finishing Yucca Mountain," Barton said. "A single, remote, underground facility would be impervious to aircraft impacts, far more difficult for terrorists to penetrate and safer than storage facilities scattered across the country."

According to excerpts of a secret report that have been made public, an academy panel of scientists concluded last summer that more needs to be known about the terrorism risks of keeping nuclear waste in pools of water. The report suggested the nuclear industry consider storing more spent fuel in above-ground cement, lead and steel casks.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Nils Diaz said in a letter to Congress last week that the recommendation to move more spent fuel into the dry casks was based on "scenarios that are unreasonable."

Joe Egan, Nevada's lead nuclear waste attorney, said the academy report gives weight to arguments by the state and other Yucca Mountain critics that nuclear waste can be stored in casks at reactor sites for hundreds of years rather than be taken to a central repository.

"This is one more piece of evidence in a shifting paradigm, to the point where Yucca is no longer necessary for the survival of nuclear power," Egan said.