Editorial: Scientific rigor gets short shrift

Wednesday, Sept. 1, 1999 | 8:53 a.m.

The U.S. Department of Energy has been trying to determine which way ground water -- contaminated by previous nuclear weapons testing -- might be traveling from the Nevada Test Site. But a panel of six scientists asserts that the DOE, despite its work to date, cannot accurately predict the path the radioactive water may be taking.

The report by the independent scientific experts hasn't been publicly released yet, but a story by the Sun's Mary Manning on Monday noted that the review criticized the DOE's lack of information to support computer models for the direction of this ground water. This is nearly identical to the criticism leveled by a peer review panel's assessment of the DOE's use of a computer model to forecast radioactive ground water escaping from a proposed high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.

We've already seen the consequences of above ground atomic testing at the Nevada Test Site from 1951 to 1962 as those who lived downwind from the tests have suffered an unusually high number of cancer deaths, which are believed to be linked to the atmospheric tests. There is no possible rationale today for failing to accurately track the legacy of underground atomic testing, which the U.S. government has said was safer than above ground testing. Yet it's pretty unsettling to hear experts determine that the DOE, which is responsible to monitor any radioactive releases from the Nevada Test Site, doesn't know which direction the contaminated water may be headed.

The review panel already has made recommendations that the DOE perform additional testing, including drilling more monitoring wells where nuclear bombs were detonated. In addition, the scientists want the DOE to examine earthquake fault zones where some of the atomic testing was done and also at Yucca Mountain. While the DOE's underground test area project manager said these concerns would be addressed, it is troubling that the computer model's limitations hadn't been anticipated before.

Congress, which funds the agency, has the responsibility to ensure that more funding be allocated to determine exactly what is occurring with ground water at the Nevada Test Site and at Yucca Mountain. And DOE's researchers should make sure that their research is based on solid science. Further scientific inquiry might not yield the answers that Washington bureaucrats and members of Congress want to hear, but the public needs to know exactly what is going on regarding the trek of radioactive ground water from the Nevada Test Site.