Editorial: Dismissing nuke dump concerns

Tuesday, April 29, 2003 | 9 a.m.

Early in March a review team for Navarro Research and Engineering, a contractor on the Yucca Mountain project, found some flaws in work procedures. So the Energy Department's project quality assurance manager issued a stop-work order until the flaws were addressed. Ominously, within about a month's time, three members of the four-member review team were reassigned by the contractor. (One of them who complained about the situation was told Friday he would get his job back.)

It's still unclear just how serious the flaws were that the review team discovered, but what is clear is that the contractor's actions warrant an investigation by Congress and the Energy Department's inspector general. We should find out if these actions were a warning sign to other employees to keep quiet about problems they uncover at the Yucca Mountain project, a program whose credibility has been tarnished because it has failed to seriously address safety concerns involving the transportation and storage of nuclear waste.

There is a certain amount of deja vu in the latest revelation. A Yucca Mountain project quality assurance manager, Jim Mattimoe, was fired in 2001 once he aired his complaints regarding how concerns about the project were handled. Mattimoe, also a Navarro Research and Engineering employee, was vindicated when a Labor Department investigation found that he was wrongly terminated. Bill Belke, a former inspector for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission who worked on-site at the Yucca Mountain project until his retirement last year, told the Sun in a story Monday that worker concerns were ignored in the seven years he was there. Belke doesn't believe the review team's findings are that significant, but he added: "If the DOE can't do the little things right, how can they be expected to do the big things right?" It's just one more indication of why the Yucca Mounta in project would be destined for failure if it ever were to receive a license from the NRC to bury 77,000 tons of nuclear waste in Nevada.