Federal offices in Las Vegas and Washington, D.C., that run the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project are undergoing a major reorganization aimed at streamlining the government's goal of entombing deadly spent fuel in the ridge.

"There will be significant organization changes, and we are in the process of doing that," Office of Repository Development spokesman Allen Benson said Thursday.

The change is afoot as officials continue to grapple with design changes and claims by critics that the project is rife with flawed science and questionable reports by federal geologists.

Among the objectives is to refocus the effort on transporting 77,000 tons of spent reactor fuel and highly radioactive defense waste to the mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

"Clearly that's going to be a major part of the program," Benson said. "It's going to be a flatter organization. You go to a more direct relationship with the management. ... We're also going to eliminate the distinction between East and West."

It will take about two months to implement the reorganization plan, Benson said. He said the Department of Energy's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, or OCRWM, headquartered in Washington, D.C., commands the $450 million budget, of which $305 million is spent on efforts in Nevada. About 170 federal employees work for OCRWM, 100 of them in Las Vegas. That's in addition to some 2,000 who work for Bechtel SAIC Co. and several other contractors, including four national laboratories.

Meanwhile, another document has surfaced that questions the integrity of studies by the U.S. Geological Survey on how fast and far surface water infiltrates the mountain, enhancing the potential for corrosion of the waste packages and escape of radioactive materials in the distant future.

A March 29, 2000, memo obtained by the Review-Journal shows a study published by the USGS was flawed but allowed to skirt the review process.

"Regretfully, the subject report is returned to the authors for additional work and explanation," begins the memo to the survey's Yucca Mountain chief at the time, Robert W. Craig, from a senior adviser in Reston, Va.

Three USGS scientists who exchanged e-mails suggesting use of "fudge factors," and who are targeted in a congressional review, authored the reports mentioned in the memo.

"Written communications based on rejected reports or conditionally approved reports that were not finally approved represent a breach of USGS policy. ... These problems must be corrected," the memo states.

Bob Loux, Nevada's Nuclear Waste Projects chief and a longtime critic of the federal project, is not surprised about the memo or the project's reorganization plan, given the state of affairs with the investigation by Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., into last year's revelations about lax quality assurance communicated in e-mails among USGS scientists.

"I'm hearing the project is just in utter chaos. ... There's no thought about a license application in the next four or five years, so the fact they're reorganizing is not surprising," Loux said by telephone from Carson City.

Had state officials known about the March 29, 2000, memo discussing the work of USGS scientists Alan and Lorraine Flint and Joseph Hevesi, it would have been ammunition for challenging the site's recommendation, Loux said.

He said reports mentioned in the memo "are probably some of the key documents DOE used to put out their hydrologic model."

Project officials have decided to redo that work, he said, because of questions raised by the USGS e-mails. The memo states that the reviewer cited technical problems with "model calibration, drainage estimates, (and) water storage" in Yucca Mountain.

Benson noted, however, that then-USGS Director Charles "Chip" Groat sent project officials a letter dated Oct. 4, 2001 supporting site recommendation. "We have to assume he took that information into account," Benson said.

Peggy Maze Johnson, director of the environmental group Citizen Alert, said the project's new direction and its past history are telling. "If it quacks like a duck and smells like a duck, it must be the Department of Energy."