Editorial: Sky’s the limit for DOE bias

Saturday, Dec. 2, 2000 | 9:58 a.m.

The Department of Energy has long maintained that it has assessed, with strict objectivity, Nevada's suitability to store high-level nuclear waste. But most Nevadans have dismissed such claims, noting how the federal agency routinely refuses to seriously consider evidence that suggests a repository couldn't possibly store -- at least safely -- 77,000 tons of high-level waste. Well, if there are any Nevadans left who had any doubts about the DOE's bias in favor of the nuclear power industry, which desperately wants a repository built, a copyrighted story in Friday's Sun should lay those notions to rest.

Sun reporters Jeff German and Mary Manning reported that previously secret DOE documents show the agency has been collaborating behind the scenes with the nuclear power industry to prepare a public report that will recommend Yucca Mountain as the site for the nation's high-level nuclear waste repository. Attached to a draft of a 60-page overview, which concludes Yucca Mountain would be safe to store nuclear waste, is a two-page note that indicates the overview is supposed to help the nuclear power industry sell the Yucca Mountain Project to Congress. "The overview provides information that potential supporters can use in expressing support for a site recommendation," says the note put together by a DOE contractor. This pretty much shatters any pretense to objectivity that the federal agency has asserted previously.

Ivan Itkin, director of the DOE's Radioactive Waste Management Office, said that the note "troubled me immensely," adding that it isn't the position of the agency. A major problem with Itkin's line of reasoning, however, is that the DOE has a history of relying on contractors to perform its work, so much so that agency administrators don't adequately oversee work to ensure it is being done properly. So while the two-page note prepared by contractors may not be the "official" position of the agency, it is the "de facto" policy that ultimately will be carried out -- unless someone steps in to stop this unholy alliance.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., says he will seek congressional hearings so that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which ultimately will decide whether Yucca Mountain is suitable, will know his concerns about the DOE's bias. It is unconscionable that the DOE is conducting such a slipshod inquiry, which bears scant resemblance to a genuine scientific investigation.