Editorial: Disturbing allegations

Tuesday, March 22, 2005 | 9 a.m.

Last Wednesday the Energy Department acknowledged that government scientists reviewing research on the Yucca Mountain project may have falsified documents. The federal government says that its concerns are rooted in e-mails involving U.S. Geological Survey scientists working for the Energy Department. The documents that may have been falsified are part of Yucca Mountain's "quality assurance" program, which is supposed to ensure the scientific accuracy of research on the project. Specifically, the research documents involve computer models of climate and water infiltration at Yucca Mountain. Nevada officials have long contended that burying nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain would threaten public safety and that project scientists haven't adequately taken into account just how easily water can move through the mountain, potentially corroding canisters containi ng nuclear waste. So, if government scientists have engaged in deception involving this critical aspect of Yucca Mountain, it very well could spell the project's demise.

As damaging as that revelation was last week, the Energy Department's troubles may have only begun. Joe Egan, a lawyer for the state of Nevada who is in charge of the legal efforts to stop a nuclear waste dump from being built here, told the Las Vegas Sun on Friday that the Energy Department may have known as far back as 2000 about the existence of other "quality assurance" problems. Lawyers working for Nevada made the discovery after scouring through a Yucca Mountain database, where they found an Energy Department audit from 2000 that revealed problems with documentation by U.S. Geological Survey scientists.

Egan said the audit discovered that USGS officials had claimed to have calibrated scientific instruments used for work at the Yucca Mountain project on a date which, it turns out, was well before the instruments actually arrived or before the procedures involving the instruments were performed. The New York Times, in a follow-up story on Sunday that provided greater detail about this disturbing allegation involving these important instruments -- one of which monitors the flow of gases or liquids -- reported that an Energy Department employee said a procurement document "gives the appearance it was falsified." Allen Messenger, a consultant for Nevada who discovered the messages from the Energy Department employee, told the Times: "This appears to be smoke, and where there's smoke, there's typically fire."

Yucca Mountain, especially as more secrets are unearthed, is cementing its status as a synonym for both shoddy science and deception. The only consolation from years wasted on such a tainted project, one that has been driven by politics and not by science, would be for the federal government to cut its losses and pull the plug. To keep this project going will only invite disaster.