Monday, April 4, 2005 | 11:03 a.m.
Yucca E-mails
Excerpts of some of the government e-mails about scientific testing at Yucca Mountain. The names and positions of the people involved have not been released,'but the e-mails come from the U.S. Geological Survey and the Energy Department.
WASHINGTON -- Questions about the quality assurance program at Yucca Mountain have been raised before, but the contents of government employee e-mails, released Friday, suggest blatant falsification of data and create a whole new set of problems.
Changing data in water studies and maintaining two sets of quality assurance reports, as the e-mails indicate, are more than just paperwork errors, experts say. A poor quality assurance program alone can shut down a project, but the data mistakes could also have caused serious miscalculations and could affect other areas of the project, experts said.
Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., who released 93 pages of redacted internal e-mails through his House Federal Workforce and Agency Organization subcommittee, said the Energy Department had led Congress all along to believe the project was based on "sound science" and that it was safe, but his review of the e-mails lead him to believe this was clearly not the case.
"The general theme is, 'Let's rush to get the project done,' " Porter said.
Porter said as he reviewed the unredacted documents it became clear that information had been deliberately falsified over a period of years.
"It literally makes me sick to my stomach," Porter said.
The Energy Department continues work on the license application for the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, a spokeswoman said. But Yucca critics say these latest revelations will be the hardest obstacle for the Energy Department to overcome.
"I've never seen anything like this," said Joe Egan, a lawyer who handles Yucca issues for the state. "I think it is unprecedented in the nuclear industry and I think it is going to profoundly affect this project."
The e-mails contain conversations by unnamed employees from 1998 through 2000 complaining about problems with water infiltration data, project funding, work hours and the project's management. The text implies, and at times clearly states, how they worked around the project's quality assurance program.
The quality assurance program was supposed to guarantee that the science used to ensure that the nuclear dump doesn't endanger the public is sound and that the data results can be traced back and justified.
The e-mails tell a different story, however.
"They may be expecting to see something that at least looks like a scientific notebook documenting work in progress. I can start making something up but then the (redacted) projects will need to go on hold," according to a January 2000 e-mail.
"Like you've said all along, YMP (Yucca Mountain project) has now reached a point where they need to have certain items work no matter what, and the infiltration maps are on that list," according to a December 1998 e-mail.
"Ideally, one would assume that the more information you provide QA (quality assurance), the better the QA. In reality, it seems that the opposite is true. At any rate, its a damn shame to be wasting time with this sort of thing," from an April 1999 e-mail.
"In the end I keep track of 2 sets of files, the ones that will keep QA happy and the ones that were actually used," according to a November 1999 message.
"I don't want to be too critical here -- I could probably tear apart any of our models. Did somebody say seepage?," an April 1998 Energy Department memo notes.
The internal documents described how the employees "fudge" data and reflect a disdain for the quality assurance program. An August 1999 e-mail in the Energy Department's file says "Piss on QA."
Egan said he doubts the problems illustrated in the e-mails are limited only to these employees.
"If QA is that bad here, it is very likely that bad elsewhere," Egan said.
Egan said he has seen nuclear power plant projects stopped because of quality assurance problems. Yucca critics point to a nuclear power plant in Ohio that was nearly completed in the 1980s, but because some construction documents were not in order, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission refused to issue an operating license. Plant owners refitted it into a coal plant.
"You just can't take safety for granted," Egan said. "This is nuclear safety we're talking about. I think there is a distinct possibility they will not submit a license application."
The Energy Department announced the discovery of the e-mails last month. Department officials discovered them while reviewing documents to go into the License Support Network, a database of the repository project's documents that will be used during the license hearings.
Egan pointed out that the Atomic Safety Licensing Board's rejection of the department's first attempt at its document collection, prompted by complaints from Nevada, led to this discovery. The first collection, submitted last June, did not contain volumes of e-mails the state felt needed to be included but the department said was not relevant.
Egan did not know specifically what he would find in the released e-mails, but knew something in the documents would be useful to the state.
"In litigation e-mails are always the best source," Egan said. "People are very candid in e-mails. It looks like they thought they were deleting them. They attempted to destroy the evidence."
Several e-mails advise recipients to "destroy this memo."
Egan and other Nevada officials as well as Energy and Interior Department officials will testify at a House Federal Workforce and Agency Organization subcommittee hearing, chaired by Porter, on Tuesday.
Porter reviewed unaltered e-mails, the Interior and Energy departments sent to the subcommittee early last week but released redacted versions Friday in advance of the hearing.
Porter complained that neither department cooperated in giving redacted copies as well, forcing his committee to go through the documents and take out information that could compromise ongoing investigations by the FBI and both departments' inspector generals.
It is a criminal investigation until the Justice Department says otherwise. According to the United States Code, anyone who "knowingly and willfully falsifies, conceals or covers up by any trick, scheme or device a material fact ..." from the government can be fined and serve up to five years in prison.
The Energy Department said it did not redact e-mails for public release nor discuss the e-mails due to the ongoing investigations.
"The department determined it would not be possible to redact the documents in a way that would allow us to say with any certainty that their release would not compromise the ongoing investigations," Anne Womack Kolton, department spokeswoman, said.
Porter's press release included an undeleted internal Energy Department memo that said, "These e-mails describe deliberate failures to follow quality assurance procedures and irreproducible results related to the infiltration of water into the repository... Depending on the current status of the work to which he (the author of the e-mails) contributed, these e-mails may create a substantial vulnerability for the program."
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