Another Yucca probe ordered

Mary Manning and Jeff German

Monday, Feb. 12, 2001 | 11:30 a.m.

Another investigation was requested today into the Energy Department's management of the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository after an anonymous letter warned that the project is on the brink of failure.

The six-page letter, which appears to have been written by a Yucca Mountain insider, was sent to DOE Inspector General Gregory Friedman late last week, as well as Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., and others on Capitol Hill. Reporters were given copies Friday.

Friedman has a team of agents in Las Vegas investigating allegations of bias in favor of Yucca Mountain on the part of the DOE and its former chief contractor on the project, TRW Environmental Safety Systems Inc.

This morning, Berkley asked the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, to look into the letter's allegations of "gross mismanagement" at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

She described the accusations as "alarming" in a one-page letter to Comptroller General David Walker, who runs the GAO.

"Among the allegations," Berkley wrote, "are the lack of oversight in relation to the continually escalating lifetime costs for storing nuclear waste at the mountain, unnecessary travel abroad by senior-level managers, lack of experience and technical background of those in charge of the project and an adversarial relationship between managers of the project and the Technical Waste Review Board."

In an interview this morning, Berkley said the allegations, particularly those involving travel abuse, can be investigated by the GAO with little effort.

"This letter has allegations of financial impropriety that the GAO normally would investigate," Berkley said. "The person who wrote this letter seems to have an intimate knowledge of what is transpiring at the Yucca Mountain Project."

Reid said he planned to ask the inspector general today to broaden the inquiry into alleged bias at Yucca Mountain in the wake of the allegations contained in the letter.

"It shows waste, fraud and abuse," Reid said. "The DOE seems to be following the policy of 'Damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead.' "

The inspector general's investigation was launched last month after the Sun had reported that the DOE appeared to be collaborating with the nuclear industry to win approval for Yucca Mountain.

Federal laws prohibit the DOE from taking sides in the site-selection process.

Of the accusations in the letter, Reid said he is particularly concerned about talk that the DOE can't get along with the federal Technical Waste Review Board, an agency created by Congress to provide advice on the progress of the nation's nuclear waste storage program.

"That compromises the fairness of the entire process," Reid said.

Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, the state's watchdog over Yucca Mountain, said the rift with the technical review board is telling.

"That's a pretty clear indication that the DOE has its mind made up about Yucca Mountain and is trying to move the project forward," he said. Loux, who also received a copy of the letter last week, said he sees it as more evidence that "this thing is crumbling from within."

Spokeswomen for the DOE, GAO and inspector general declined comment this morning.

The letter discusses other problems, such as the soaring costs of burying 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain and the failure of Lake Barrett, an eight-year veteran of the DOE's program, to manage the program effectively. Barrett became acting director of the DOE's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management after Ivan Itkin resigned under the new Bush administration.

Barrett's office has spent more than $6.5 billion on nuclear waste management in 19 years, more than half of that on scientific studies at Yucca Mountain.

Over the past three administrations, Barrett has periodically assumed the role of acting director for DOE's nuclear waste management program. Before joining the DOE, he was an engineer with General Dynamics and Bechtel Power Corp., as well as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission -- the agency that must license a repository.

Bechtel-SAIC, a Nevada company formed to bid on the Yucca Mountain contract, takes over management of the DOE's project today. Bechtel-SAIC was awarded the five-year, $3.1 billion contract in November.

The anonymous letter said the official projected costs of Yucca Mountain have soared from $36 billion in 1995 to $58 billion today. And an independent internal estimate has revealed the real costs may be more than $62 billion and rising.

"That is incredible," the letter said, pointing to the problems being created by the ongoing dispute between the DOE and the technical review board.

"The program, encouraged and led by Lake Barrett, has engaged in what can only be termed a running battle with the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board for the last eight years," the letter said.

"This monumental miscalculation -- that the board was not going to be a player in the site suitability recommendation process -- may eventually lead to the failure of the program."

Additional costs of complying with the review board's recommendations for monitoring the safety of Yucca Mountain and dealing with potential damages from pending lawsuits could drive the projects costs to $75 billion, the letter said.

The DOE's Public Affairs Office in Washington denied a request to interview Barrett.

"The author of the letter recognizes Barrett as the bureaucrat behind the scenes," said Kevin Kamps of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, a Washington-based watchdog group. "He's been the guy behind Ivan Itkin. He knows what's going on."

The nuclear industry denied knowing anything about the letter or who wrote it. "We have no idea who the author might be," the Nuclear Energy Institute's Steve Kerekes said.

Yucca Mountain is the only site under study by the federal government to dispose of both commercial reactor and nuclear weapons wastes. The repository was supposed to open in 1998, but lengthy scientific studies at the site and a veto threat by President Clinton to stop temporary storage in Nevada delayed the opening until at least 2010.

The technical review board has serious concerns about the DOE's scientific work at Yucca Mountain.

The anonymous letter included an internal board memo in which the agency's executive director, Bill Barnard, expressed personal concerns that the DOE's plan for Yucca Mountain was confusing and ill-defined.

"Without a well-defined plan for creating a technically defensible process for the secretary to select a repository design concept, it appears that DOE may be trying to sell 'a pig in a poke,' " Barnard wrote. "Unfortunately, people do not have sufficient trust in DOE to accept this approach."

Barnard said today that he did not know who wrote the anonymous letter.

Bob Alvarez, a staffer under former Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary, said the letter points out common examples of alleged mismanagement at the DOE.

"Typical of a large DOE project, and that includes Yucca Mountain, contractors are virtually given a blank check and there's no oversight," Alvarez said.

"The whole civilian radioactive waste office needs a total management analysis and review," Alvarez said, noting that the GAO and the National Academy of Sciences have been critical of DOE's top management in recent years.

In 1998 the GAO reviewed DOE's programs around the country and found that up to 85 percent of its projects failed in the last 20 years because of cost overruns.

"Essentially, it becomes a large gravy train for the system," Alvarez said.

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