Panel examining e-mails that suggest Yucca data falsified

Suzanne Struglinski

Wednesday, March 30, 2005 | 9:31 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department and Interior Department gave e-mails to a Congressional subcommittee Tuesday in preparation for next week's hearing on alleged falsified scientific information related to the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear dump.

Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., who is chairman of the House Federal Workforce and Agency Organization Subcommittee will conduct a hearing April 5 focusing on the documentation problems now under investigation by both departments.

The Energy Department announced earlier this month that it discovered e-mails by U.S. Geological Survey employees that suggest employees falsified scientific data while studying Yucca, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as the site to serve as the nation's dump for highly radioactive nuclear waste.

Chad Bungard, the subcommittee's deputy staff director and chief counsel, confirmed the subcommittee received the e-mails Tuesday as well as some other documents Porter requested. He expects the department will make other documents available soon.

"They are just getting into this, too," he said.

Bungard, who is in Nevada meeting with Porter's staff, said the e-mails will be made available Friday. Bungard was scheduled to tour Yucca Mountain today.

In addition to Porter's hearing, another hearing regarding Yucca Mountain is planned for April 7. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., is conducting that one to look at the status of the Yucca Mountain project. A witness list had not been completed for that hearing as of this morning, Domenici's staff said. This hearing was planned before the documentation problem was known.

Domenici asked Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman at a committee hearing March 3 to complete a status report on the project. He told Bodman he may be the Energy Secretary that has to look at other options because the Yucca project is taking too long but did not elaborate on his comment.

The Energy Department was supposed to move used nuclear fuel from commercial nuclear power plants in 1998 but the Yucca Mountain now is not expected to begin taking the nuclear waste until 2012 at the earliest.