Wednesday, May 11, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

E-mail scandal doesn't doom Yucca, Bodman tells lawmakers

Samuel Bodman Energy secretary meets for first time with Nevada delegation

WASHINGTON -- Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said Tuesday the Bush administration will continue to move forward at Yucca Mountain while it investigates e-mail messages that suggest some quality assurance documents on the nuclear waste project might have been faked.

"It has been my judgment that until I see something that indicates the science of this project has been compromised, we're going to go forward," Bodman said after emerging from a meeting with Nevada lawmakers.

"We continue to do our work, and I don't consider Yucca Mountain to be dead," Bodman said.

The energy secretary conveyed the same message to four Nevada lawmakers during a half-hour meeting. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., was in Las Vegas with her son, Max, who underwent an appendectomy on Tuesday.

It was decidedly not the message the state leaders wanted to hear in response to their calls for repository planning to be put on hold while investigators weigh possible effects of the controversial e-mails.

The session was described by participants as cordial turned frosty as Bodman was direct in answering the Nevadans' calls for a project halt, and for DOE to move faster to turn over documents to a House subcommittee investigation headed by Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev.

"I just don't know if he needs better skills on Capitol Hill," Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said after Bodman left the meeting. "He just brushed it off like it was no big deal, and we believe it was a big deal."

The gathering in the U.S. Capitol office of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., marked the first meeting between Bodman and the Nevada delegation since he became energy secretary early this year.

It also was their first meeting since the energy secretary on March 16 disclosed a cache of e-mail messages from 1998-2000 that suggested one or two scientists might have falsified documents to satisfy quality assurance requirements on hydrology research they were performing.

Inspectors general at the Energy Department and the Department of Interior are investigating with assistance from the FBI. DOE has initiated another internal review to see whether the work being questioned affected decisions to seek a license for Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste burial site.

Bodman said he did not know when the internal reviews would be finished.

"Until the work is completed I have not yet formed a judgment on the validity or the lack of validity of the science," Bodman said. "Everybody is working hard in an effort to make that determination."

Nevada lawmakers charged that Bodman did not convey a sense of urgency to them.

"We thought he would be concerned about e-mails that indicate the science was rigged," Reid said. "Frankly, that was of no interest to him. He said the project was going forward as is. He was not apologetic to us at all."

Porter said DOE has dragged its feet in turning over documents to his subcommittee, saying the secretary's "respect for the legislative process was less than it should be."

According to participants, Bodman said he did not want to take any steps that might jeopardize ongoing investigations, an answer that did not satisfy the lawmakers.

"It was something of an eye-opening experience to realize they have an obvious mandate to license Yucca Mountain despite what the science may say or what they don't know," said Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev.

Gibbons said Nevada lawmakers might seek to withhold Energy Department money later this year.

"It gets down to playing hardball," Gibbons said. "We control their funding."