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Yucca plan slowed by recent departure of key managers

WEEKEND EDITION

August 6-7, 2005

WASHINGTON -- The Yucca Mountain program has lost five key managers in the last six months, raising speculation that recent controversy and frustration have led to a damaging exodus of leadership talent.

The Energy Department says the departures will not cause additional grief to a project already plagued by delays.

But management experts are not so sure.

UNLV construction management professor Neil Opfer said that if management departures have not hurt the day-to-day operations of Yucca Mountain, "it would be the first time in history that has ever happened."

"You lose something," Opfer said. "This affects decision-making."

The Yucca Mountain Project is as a massive government program as there is, with a long history, a big budget and an ambitious goal of constructing a national repository for high-level nuclear waste.

While there is always some churn of leadership on the project, since the top managers are political appointees, the recent turnover has been noteworthy for the number and the timing of the resignations.

Key leaders listed on the organizational flow chart began leaving after the Feb. 25 resignation of Yucca's top manager, Margaret Chu.

Chu announced her exit four days after the Bush administration released a scaled-back Yucca budget request. Minutes after the budget was unveiled, Chu admitted to reporters that the department's long-held goal of opening Yucca by 2010 had slipped at least two years.

Chu lasted three years in the job. She said she had always planned to leave after Bush's first term ended. Department officials said there was no connection between Chu's exit and her candor with reporters.

That left deputy director Theodore Garrish as the top-ranking Yucca official. He retired two months later, about a month after the department stumbled into more controversy -- a document review had uncovered Yucca worker e-mails that suggested quality assurance documents may have been falsified. The discovery launched several investigations, including one led by Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., chairman of a subcommittee of the House Government Reform Committee.

Garrish testified before Porter's panel on April 5. The department announced his "long-planned retirement" on April 25, and his last day was May 13.

The suggestion that quality assurance documents might have been falsified is potentially damaging because the quality assurance program is designed to assure that scientific work was done properly and to assure the accuracy of Yucca research. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will rely on quality assurance documents to verify the completeness of the scientific work, and ultimately to determine whether Yucca can safely store 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste.

The QA program has been criticized by the commission, the GAO and the department's Inspector General in the past.

That makes the departure last month of Yucca quality assurance manager R. Dennis Brown significant. After the e-mails were disclosed, Brown was tasked with reviewing more recent quality assurance procedures, as the GAO is updating an investigation it completed on the quality assurance program last year.

Brown will not renew his contract, according to the department. The department did not formally announce that, but Brown in late July sent employees an e-mail signaling his exit.

News of Brown's resignation came one day after news surfaced that Yucca licensing manager Joseph Ziegler was leaving, citing personal reasons. He leaves at a time when obtaining a license application is the most pressing goal of the program. The department is struggling to complete the application. It missed a deadline last year, and its revised December goal likely will slip at least three months.

Yucca will undergo another loss when John Mitchell, president and general manager of top Yucca contractor Bechtel SAIC, leaves Aug. 12. Bechtel handles the day-to-day activities of the project, and worked on the project's draft license application.

Mitchell will be replaced by Ted Feigenbaum, president of Maine Yankee Atomic Power Co. Bechtel spokesman Jason Bohne said Feigenbaum has a lot of experience with nuclear energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Bohne said a transition plan is in place and Feigenbaum will spend time with Mitchell before his departure.

Energy Department spokesman Allen Benson said department employees continue to work on Yucca while the White House searches for a replacement for a permanent Yucca chief and other managers.

For now, President Bush has named Paul Golan acting director. He took over when Garrish left in May.

The departures of Chu, Garrish, Brown and Ziegler have had no practical affect at all on the $58 billion project, Benson said.

But experts are skeptical.

It's just "common sense" that complex projects suffer with managerial departures, said Thomas Allen, a professor of management at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"Who knows what was in those brains that walked out the door?" Allen asked. "Any time you lose people who have gained all that experience, it sets you back. You have to re-create that knowledge."

It is not uncommon for political appointees to leave after a certain amount of time, or for subordinates to leave after a director resigns, said Constance Horner, a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.

"The new Dr. Chu may bring a new set of subordinates to replace those that have left," she said.

Horner said there are two possible outcomes once top officials leave: the civil service staff steps up and manages the program until the new political appointee comes along, or work slows down because politically driven decisions can get kicked up the ladder to higher and higher offices until they reach someone who can make the decision.

The career staff -- non-political appointees -- can sometimes do their jobs better without an added layer of scrutiny over them, she said.

"It can be stressful if there is uncertainty about the course of action," Horner said. "It can also be a period of considerable professional satisfaction."

Former Nuclear Regulatory Chairman Richard Meserve said the Bush administration will need to fill all the positions with people who have both nuclear and management experience.

"You have a challenge at DOE in that the whole bunch of people that were at the center of this are not there," said Meserve, now president of the Carnegie Institution. "I have no idea what (Energy) Secretary (Samuel) Bodman is thinking, but he does have some very important positions to fill."

Meserve said there are technical as well legal issues that have to be addressed.

"It's not going to be an easy job," Meserve said.

Replacing leaders is a time-consuming and costly endeavor, and once new managers are hired, companies and government agencies, like the department, have to bring them up to speed, UNLV's Opfer said.

"When someone walks out mid-project, you lose your investment in the on-the-job education you put into that person," Opfer said.

Another problem that frequently occurs is that once the department hires a new manager, the manager may not mesh with the leadership team in place, creating more delays, Opfer said. Then sometimes those team members leave, he said.

Management turnover also makes it more difficult to assign accountability because new managers can blame problems on old regimes, Opfer said.

Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., said the number of departures raises questions.

"I think it probably reflects the frustration and futility of constantly trying to fit a square peg in a round hole," Gibbons said.

"Continuity of leadership is always important in any government agency. When you start losing leaders, that continuity and efficiency is affected, I don't care what they say."

Nevada officials note that the departures come as Yucca continues to face a slew of budgetary, technical and legal obstacles. A federal court last year dealt Yucca a setback when it threw out a radiation release standard. The Energy Department has sought to prove Yucca can meet that scrapped standard.

The Environmental Protection Agency could issue a new radiation standard this year, which would force the Energy Department to make license application revisions.

Porter said the employees still working at the department may suffer through the changes.

"They deserve consistent management," Porter said. "I can only imagine what they are thinking."

Porter noted that Energy Secretary Bodman and other top department officials are just a few months on the job, too.

"Who's in charge?" Porter said. "No one is minding the ship."

Nevada lawmakers also have been frustrated by Energy Department officials who have dismissed the e-mail controversy as not likely to affect the repository's progress.

"Forget a moment that it is a federal agency," Porter said. "If this was the private sector ... it would be national headlines if all the corporation's officials resigned in the midst of an investigation."

The Yucca project is so big that the departure of several key managers may slow the project further, but it probably won't be "catastrophic," said John Garrick, chairman of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board. The board was created by Congress to act as an independent watchdog of Yucca science.

Garrick said that even though Yucca program employees are missing some bosses, they have a clear goal to keep them motivated: to submit the license application.

But there is no question the Yucca program has been reeling, especially since the court threw out the radiation release standard, Garrick said. The program lost steam when it missed its goal last year of submitting the license, he said.

Program officials are under a lot of pressure to move the program forward, so it's not surprising to see some departures, Garrick said. And those departures can naturally lead to day-to-day delays, said Garrick, whose long career included running an international engineering and management consultant firm.

Sometimes a fresh infusion of new leaders can spark new enthusiasm and energy on a project, Garrick said, adding that that may be just what Yucca needs.

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