Secret Yucca plan allegedly leaked

Benjamin Grove and Mary Manning

Thursday, Nov. 1, 2001 | 10:43 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials are investigating whether a confidential Yucca Mountain review plan was leaked by someone inside the agency to the Department of Energy.

The application for a license to bury 77,000 tons of deadly nuclear waste from the nation's defense activities and commercial power plants at Yucca Mountain is scheduled to be submitted by the DOE to the NRC sometime next year.

If the NRC's guidelines for reviewing the application were indeed known by the DOE, it would give the department and its Yucca Mountain contractor an advantage in preparing the application.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said a leak of the Yucca review plan could be a violation of federal law.

A leak also would indicate an inappropriately close relationship between license applicant -- the DOE -- and license reviewer -- the NRC, Nevada officials said.

A leak "would seriously undermine the credibility of both the NRC and DOE and likely is in violation of NRC and DOE rules and applicable laws," Reid said in a letter to the NRC sent Wednesday.

Yucca Mountain is 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas and is the only site in the country being considered for burial of the high-level nuclear waste.

The NRC's Inspector General's office launched an investigation of the suspected leak in Washington "about a week ago," NRC spokeswoman Sue Gagner said today. Investigators are due in Las Vegas in the "near future," Gagner said.

Gagner would not comment on whether a leak had occurred.

"The investigation will examine that," Gagner said.

Bob Loux, director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, said two reliable sources have said someone at the NRC first leaked the Yucca review guidelines to Winston & Strawn, the international law firm hired by the Department of Energy to complete $16.5 million in legal work on the Yucca Mountain project.

The law firm allegedly then gave the guidelines to its client, DOE officials at the Yucca Mountain project office in Las Vegas, Loux said.

The DOE is the manager of the Yucca project, a first-of-its kind proposal to bury the nation's nuclear waste. Yucca Mountain must meet NRC approval before it is constructed.

A call to Winston & Strawn's Washington office was not returned today. Neither was a call to the firm's New York public relations agency, The Dilenschneider Group.

Loux said he hopes an investigation also would uncover whether the DOE's primary contractor, Bechtel SAIC Co., and other nuclear industry officials now have the document.

Yucca Mountain project spokespersons in Las Vegas said they did not know about anyone at DOE obtaining the NRC plans.

"I personally have not seen anything like that," Allen Benson, chief spokesman for the Yucca Project, said.

"I'll have to check into it, but we haven't heard a thing," Gayle Fisher, another Yucca spokeswoman, said late Wednesday.

Officials at the DOE and its chief Yucca contractor, Bechtel SAIC, also did not know investigators were soon arriving in Las Vegas, officials said.

Bea Reilly, a spokeswoman for Bechtel, on Wednesday said she had just left a meeting with both project officials and attorneys and no one had mentioned the investigation or document.

"It was fairly quiet, nothing much is happening," Reilly said.

At issue is a document commonly called a "standard review plan." The NRC routinely draws up the plan before licensing a new facility, such as a nuclear power plant or low-level waste site. The plan is developed internally -- in private -- at the NRC. The plan would include procedures that NRC staffers would use to decide whether a facility meets certain criteria.

Eventually, before the NRC licensing review process begins, the five-member commission votes to publish the plan.

But the Yucca standard review plan is still in development, so it should not yet be outside the NRC.

The leak would be significant because ultimately the NRC as an impartial, independent agency is responsible for deciding whether Yucca is a safe place to bury the nation's nuclear waste, now piling up at 103 nuclear power plants nationwide.

NRC officials have said that reviewing the DOE's Yucca proposal would be a complex process that could take several years. The NRC would license and regulate the waste site if it is constructed.

If the DOE and Bechtel SAIC have obtained the NRC's internal game plan for reviewing the Yucca proposal, it would put the DOE and its contractor in a better position to prepare an airtight proposal.

In theory, DOE or Bechtel officials also could launch a behind-the-scenes lobbying campaign to pressure the NRC to alter the review process, said Joe Egan, a Virginia-based attorney who works for Loux.

Loux received word of a possible NRC leak within the last week, he said. He promptly notified Nevada officials.

Reid on Wednesday sent his letter to NRC Inspector General Hubert Bell requesting an immediate investigation.

"By possibly releasing this License Review Plan, the NRC may have significantly diminished its impartiality," wrote Reid, who is chairman of the Senate subcommittee that has jurisdiction over the NRC. "I urge you to investigate this matter immediately and take any necessary corrective action."

Loux said his sources said NRC investigators are due in Las Vegas as early as today. The NRC's Gagner confirmed that two investigators are headed to Las Vegas, but would not say exactly when. She said the investigation was "high priority" for the NRC.

As to what prompted the investigation, Gagner would only say "the agency received information." Gagner said it was not clear how long the investigation could take.

Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa and private attorneys hired by the state also are seeking evidence of the leaked document, Loux said.

"The state has always maintained that the DOE and the NRC's relationship was cozy," Loux said. "If this is true, it is really the NRC that is the culprit here."

DOE and contractor scientists have collected a massive amount of scientific data at Yucca after years and $8 billion worth of study. The DOE is developing a final recommendation for President Bush about the site, due in the next few months.

Loux argued that if the DOE has obtained the NRC's review plan, the state also should have a copy.

But Loux hasn't been able to get it. Loux sent Egan to get a copy last week. But Egan was unsuccessful.

Egan today said a credible source at the NRC told him that "it's not out yet, no one has it and no one is supposed to have it." Still, Egan firmly believes a leak has occurred, although he would not compromise his other sources, he said.

Former senator and governor Richard Bryan, now a member of the state Commission on Nuclear Projects, called the alleged NRC leak "inappropriate" and showing "bias" in the licensing process.

Winston & Strawn is already under investigation by the DOE Inspector General for its relationship with the pro-Yucca Nuclear Energy Institute. The Sun in July reported that the law firm, which since 1999 has been reviewing the Yucca license application for the DOE, also lobbied for NEI in favor of Yucca Mountain.

Nevada officials say the firm's former relationship with a pro-Yucca lobby group and its work for DOE creates a conflict of interest.

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