DOE blames contractor for memo

Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2000 | 11:17 a.m.

Top Department of Energy officials have distanced themselves from a memo in a draft copy of a Yucca Mountain site study that links the DOE to the nuclear waste industry.

Federal law prohibits the DOE from taking sides during the site-selection process.

Energy Secretary Bill Richardson and the DOE's nuclear waste chief, Ivan Itkin, on Monday blamed the major Yucca Mountain contractor for the memo, which also suggested that the study could be used to help persuade Congress to build a nuclear waste dump 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

TRW Environmental Safety Systems Inc. is in charge of studies at Yucca Mountain until Feb. 11. The company is preparing a report on the repository for the DOE to present to Congress and the public by the end of this year.

Richardson on Monday called "extremely disturbing" statements he read in a copyrighted Sun story Friday that reported the DOE has been working with the nuclear industry to prepare the report that will recommend Yucca Mountain become the world's first high-level nuclear waste repository.

Research on the site's suitability are still ongoing and not expected to be completed for years. However, the memo noted that no scientific evidence indicates that Yucca Mountain is unsuitable.

"The suitability of Yucca Mountain as a site will be based on science and not on what's good for the nuclear industry," Richardson said Monday.

"I wish to assure the citizens of Nevada that the evident bias of the contractor will not be a factor in the decision on suitability of Yucca Mountain," Richardson said.

The Sun reported Friday that it had obtained a draft of a 60-page overview that concludes Yucca Mountain is safe to store 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste, although ongoing studies of the Nevada site have not been completed.

Federal law prohibits the DOE from taking sides during the site selection process.

A two-page note, attached to the draft, was put together by DOE contractors suggesting the overview is designed to help nuclear industry officials sell the Yucca Mountain Project to Congress.

The note says the overview presents Yucca Mountain as the "key component in the DOE's proposed solution" to the country's nuclear waste problem.

"In fact, the technical suitability of the site is less of a concern to Congress than the broader issue of whether the nuclear problem can be solved at an affordable price in both financial and political terms," the note says.

Itkin, director of the DOE's Civilian Radioactive Waste Management Office in Washington, called the note an "onerous passage," and said he removed it after the document was distributed to about a dozen DOE reviewers.

"We (at DOE) take a very clinical view as to how we approach this," Itkin said. "I consider us diagnosticians."

The overview announced a new price tag for a Yucca Mountain dump at $58 billion, well above a previous $36 billion estimate of the mid-1990s. A final DOE recommendation to Congress is expected in June.

TRW's President and General Manager George Dials did not respond to repeated phone calls for an interview on the DOE's comments.

Dials did send a letter to the Sun, saying, "The development of this essential national policy is frequently attacked and hindered by misconceptions fostered by organizations which have their own anti-nuclear policy.

"This is a time for rational thinking on this issue, not uproar and accusations," Dials wrote.

"The nuclear energy industry and the nuclear defense industry both have vested interests in an appropriate and necessary national policy for the disposal of nuclear waste," Dials said. "These industrial sectors have critical national security and public health and safety interests to protect. A lack of concern on their part would be irresponsible."

TRW and Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) have had the Yucca contract since 1991. In February the contract will shift to a partnership of Bechtel Nevada's subsidiary SAIC Company, LLC, which operates the Nevada Test Site. The new contract is $3.5 billion for five years.

Before joining TRW, Dials was a senior vice president with the engineering firm ICF Kaiser. Before joining private industry, he managed the DOE's Waste Isolation Pilot Project office in Carlsbad, N.M., and headed the DOE's national transuranic program, which manages the nation's supply of plutonium. The Carlsbad repository accepts plutonium-contaminated wastes from Defense Department activities.