Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, left, ponders a question Wednesday while Paul Golan, acting civilian radioactive waste management director, discusses the Yucca Mountain Project in an editorial board meeting at the Review-Journal. Photo by Jeff Scheid.

On his first trip to Las Vegas as energy secretary, Samuel Bodman admitted Wednesday that there have been flaws with the quality of the science in the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project. But he vowed to hold the course for opening a repository because the nation, he said, increasingly will rely on nuclear power.

The 67-year-old chemical engineer from Massachusetts said a bill to speed the process and clear the way for expanding the planned repository from holding 77,000 tons to more than 120,000 tons of deadly nuclear waste and spent fuel assemblies is key to achieving that goal.

The Bush administration's nuclear power cost-sharing initiative to license three or four civilian nuclear reactors by 2010 "is going pretty well," he said.

"The problem is we don't need three or four nuclear plants in my judgment. We need 14 or 24. We need a large number. And that's the driver behind Yucca Mountain," Bodman said.

His comments came at a meeting with the Review-Journal's editorial board on the eve of a trip today to the Nevada Test Site and Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Asked whether the concept of disposing nuclear waste inside the volcanic-rock ridge or any geologic setting where it must be contained safely for hundreds of thousands or a million years defies good science, Bodman said: "I can tell you I know about science. I have training in science. This will be done according to good science, or it will not be done."

He bristled at comments by critics of the federal nuclear waste disposal plan.

The critics contend that the Energy Department is so intent on pushing the Yucca Mountain Project through, despite quality assurance problems, that it will step on state powers to obtain a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, take water from the state for the repository and withdraw land for a rail line to haul waste to it.

Changing the law to expand the repository "is not a big deal," Bodman said. "It is a significant difference, but I do not consider this a major part of the legislation."

The Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency, the force behind the state's official opposition to the project, contends that the new legislation is "an unconstitutional usurpation of Nevada's sovereign prerogatives (that) obscenely circumvents Yucca's scientific flaws."

Bodman's reaction to that comment was: "It's wrong."

"I think that's an incorrect assessment," he said. "First of all, we're not being exonerated from anything. We have had failings in the past. I've acknowledged that. ... Under this legislation, we will continue to be subject to the NRC's licensing effort."

Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency, said Bodman's remark indicates that he must not be familiar with case law on state water rights. Western lawmakers, he said, are unified that federal attempts to commandeer a state's water are unconstitutional.

"If he does not think there is a constitutional issue there, then he is more unaware of federal law than he ought to be," Loux said.

After e-mails among U.S. Geological Survey scientists surfaced last year and brought into question the quality of scientific work, Bodman has acknowledged that the Yucca Mountain Project is "broken."

On Wednesday, he could not pinpoint when the project became broken but said his acting civilian waste management director, Paul Golan, expects to have a license application for Yucca Mountain ready for review in 2008, four years late.

Although legislation is a piece of the "fix," he said, a larger part is a "clean canister" design approach to the management of Yucca Mountain for which a schedule will be made public this summer.

He was vague about his plan to fix what is broken. "As of today I can't answer the specifics of the question," he said.

Earlier he said, "I have been disappointed in what I inherited with respect to management practices that have been used in the past."

"The culture of this organization was not what we wish it to be," he said. "It is reflected in the USGS e-mail. ... It's clear that we're not dealing with an organization at that point in time that was ready to go forward with a license application."

Golan said he will change the project's culture not by decree but through transparent leadership "and by the small things you do, by rewarding people who bring things up. ... It's leading by example. It's holding people accountable. It's mentoring them."

Loux was unconvinced. "This is the umpteenth time the project has been refocused, re-evaluated, re-committed," he said. "Everything continues along like it did in the past. While they may be sincere in trying to correct these things, you can't solve the problems at Yucca Mountain with leadership tools. The problem is you can't fix bad science."

Peggy Maze Johnson, executive director of Citizen Alert, a statewide environmental group, waited Wednesday outside the Review-Journal with two staff members to confront Bodman.

Maze Johnson said they wanted to question him about why the Silver State is a constant target for proposed federal programs that would put Nevadans and the state's environment at risk.

She referred to the Yucca Mountain Project and the planned Divine Strake non-nuclear explosion. The blast at the test site is slated for June 2, but it was put on hold by state environmental officials until they are shown that the explosion will comply with air quality standards.

Despite allegations by anti-nuclear activists that the test is intended to develop a bunker-busting nuclear bomb, Bodman said Divine Strake is for conventional weapons development.

Maze Johnson said the Energy Department is trying to move forward with both proposals by bypassing environmental laws.

"Nevada seems to be a target these days," she said. "Why is it that they (federal officials) keep trying to jam these things down our throats? It's not appropriate. It's not legal."

Review-Journal writer Antonio Planas contributed to this report.