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U.S. Lawmakers Excoriate Yucca Officials Over Faked Documents, Call for Outside Review By Joe Fiorill WASHINGTON — Members of the U.S. House of Representatives laid into Bush administration officials yesterday over a growing scandal involving falsified studies by researchers working on the planned Yucca Mountain high-level nuclear waste repository in Nevada (see GSN, April 4). After releasing e-mails last week in which project personnel discussed faking research about the potential for water infiltration at the storage site, members of a House Government Reform subcommittee blasted officials from the Energy and Interior departments at a hearing yesterday. Federal Work Force and Agency Organization Subcommittee members, Nevada senators and state officials called for an independent review of the science underlying the federal government’s view that the site is suitable for a waste repository. Energy officials’ have claimed that the falsified data were not essential to the case for Yucca Mountain’s suitability. That has led to concerns that, in the words of Nevada Governor Kenny Guinn, the administration’s “wagons are being circled” in a bid to minimize the effect of the disclosures on the bid for a Nuclear Regulatory Commission license for the project. “It’s a flawed project. It should be brought to a stunning halt,” Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) told his House colleagues. “The whole project is a lesson in what’s wrong about government, and that is too bad.” Nevada’s other Democratic senator, John Ensign, added that the Energy Department’s “quality assurance program has been revealed for what it is: a fraud.” Administration officials at the hearing called for patience, indicating they could fire employees over the scandal but not until the completion of investigations by the inspectors general of the Energy Department and the Interior Department’s U.S. Geological Survey. The Energy Department’s top Yucca Mountain official, Theodore Garrish, told the subcommittee that the falsifications were unacceptable but do not “condemn” the work of “thousands of responsible scientists on this project,” which he said supports the site’s suitability. “We found the problem, we identified it, and we will do what’s required to rectify it,” he said. Although Garrish said that “we are the ones that brought this issue forward,” Nevada officials and subcommittee members rejected that view, saying the department released the information only under pressure from the state. The Yucca Mountain project manager for government contractor Bechtel Corp., John Mitchell, said the project would still meet all the licensing commission’s quality standards. “The willful action of the individuals in question is an insult to the integrity” of other project scientists, Mitchell said.
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