Guinn seeks halt of Yucca work

Thursday, Aug. 2, 2001 | 11:22 a.m.

Gov. Kenny Guinn has asked Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham to stop work at the proposed high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain while an independent investigation is conducted into an alleged conflict of interest involving a Chicago-based law firm.

Winston & Strawn was hired by the Energy Department to review licensing documents required by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission regarding Yucca Mountain while it also lobbied for the nuclear industry, Guinn wrote in the letter to Abraham, dated Wednesday.

The DOE has spent $7 billion studying Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as the sole site for a proposed high-level nuclear repository for 77,000 tons of radioactive waste over a 20-year period.

Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., also on Wednesday called for a DOE inspector general's investigation into the allegations.

Inspector general spokeswoman Wilma Slaughter said the agency is independent and conducts fact-finding investigations. "We have no authority to suspend or cancel a contract," she said.

Abraham or contracting officer Craig Frame could suspend the contract, Slaughter said.

In a separate letter Wednesday, Ensign and Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., asked the DOE to terminate Winston & Strawn's contract.

"According to current law, the Department of Energy is required to make an unbiased, objective and independent assessment as to whether the proposed site at Yucca Mountain is safe to bury tons of highly radioactive waste," Reid said in the letter.

"What troubles me and most Americans who face the potential of nuclear waste rolling through their communities is that this apparent conflict of interest jeopardizes the public trust in DOE's ability to make an unbiased, independent assessment," Reid said.

The DOE hired Winston & Strawn for $16.5 million in September 1999 to complete legal work related to licensing issues involving Yucca Mountain. From 1996 to July 11 the 850-attorney firm also represented the Nuclear Energy Institute -- the nuclear power trade group -- before Congress, the NRC and the Environmental Protection Agency on various nuclear issues, according to congressional records.

The law firm also represented former Yucca contractor TRW, a company managing the Yucca project for DOE from 1992 to 1999.

"I believe this situation warrants an immediate halt to the site evaluation and suitability process pending a complete and independent investigation external to DOE of the entire program," Guinn wrote.

"It might be that such a review will conclude DOE's entire program has been so prejudiced that any further consideration of Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste repository must come to an end," Guinn wrote.

DOE spokeswoman Jille Schroeder said the agency received Guinn's letter late Wednesday, but department officials had no comment.

The inspector general recently completed an investigation into a conflict of interest charge against the DOE for attempting, in an anonymous two-page memo attached to a Yucca scientific report, to sell the idea for the repository to Congress. The inspector general in April ruled that there was no conflict.

Reps. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., and Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., on Wednesday successfully kept DOE's Yucca budget under annual congressional review. The DOE asked to take Yucca funding out of the routine budgeting process, an move that would have allowed the agency to finish its studies by spending the remaining $10 billion in a special fund set up in 1982.

Reid has already slashed a $445 million DOE request for this year to $275 million, although a joint congressional committee must still approve DOE's budget.

"The best way to delay the program is to cut the funding," Ensign said.