Nevada lawmakers call for more scrutiny of DOE bias

Wednesday, Dec. 20, 2000 | 11:16 a.m.

The Nevada congressional delegation is asking the General Accounting Office to investigate whether the Energy Department has shown a bias for a high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.

The request could launch a second federal probe into possible prejudice by the department, which by law is not allowed to take sides during the site-selection process. Yucca Mountain is the only site being studied for a repository.

At Nevada Democrat Sen. Harry Reid's request, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson opened an inspector general's investigation last week into the "apparent bias" of TRW Environmental Safety Systems Inc., the primary Yucca Mountain Project contractor.

The requests for the investigations come after a copyrighted story Dec. 1, in which the Sun reported that TRW prepared a 60-page overview with a two-page memo that said the report could be used to sell Yucca project to Congress.

The latest probe could be conducted by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., expressed strong support for a GAO investigation into the DOE's "potentially disastrous" oversight of studies at Yucca, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., who appeared with Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman at a rally on Tuesday to sign a letter asking Richardson to disqualify Yucca as a nuclear waste site, said she is prepared for another investigation.

"It will be interesting to compare the two investigations," Berkley said, adding that Gibbons had agreed with her to conduct public hearings in Las Vegas so DOE officials could testify under oath about the report.

Berkley also sent a letter to President-elect George W. Bush urging him to continue the investigations into nuclear industry influence on the project.

Sen.-elect John Ensign, R-Nev., also has thrown his support behind the investigation, though he is not yet officially in Congress, according to his chief of staff, Scott Bensing.

"Investigations in the past by the GAO have been helpful in regard to such subjects as (public) land exchanges," he said.

About 165 environmental groups delivered a letter to Richardson on Tuesday demanding that Yucca Mountain be disqualified as the nation's first high-level nuclear waste repository on scientific grounds.

Their main objection involves water found 1,000 feet beneath the site, where the repository would be located. Tests indicate some of the water was 50 years old or younger, which, the groups say, proves the site is unfit to contain wastes for 10,000 years.

Ground water could corrode the buried casks containing the wastes, allowing radioactivity to escape to the environment within decades.

Goodman was the first public official to sign the letter and denounced the DOE's actions during a press conference at Las Vegas City Hall Plaza.

The Las Vegas City Council has passed a law making shipments of nuclear waste through the city limits a misdemeanor, punishable by up to six months in jail and a $2,000 fine, Goodman said.