Nuclear review board will reserve Yucca judgment until investigation completed

Suzanne Struglinski

Monday, May 9, 2005 | 9:27 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board will examine the outcome of investigations into scientific work on the Yucca Mountain project once they are complete, Board Chairman B. John Garrick told Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev.

Porter, chairman of the House Federal Workforce and Agency Organization Subcommittee, held a hearing last month regarding e-mails discovered by the Energy Department that suggest U.S. Geological Survey Employees falsified scientific information on the Yucca Mountain project.

The Energy Department aims to build the nation's high-level nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

In response to questions left unanswered at the hearing, Garrick sent a letter to Porter April 29 outlining the board's position.

Garrick said if the data or analyses were falsified, as suggested by the e-mails, and if the data or analyses significantly affected the proposed repository's performance estimates, "the consequences could be serious."

But Garrick made clear that the board won't know the answers to those questions until the investigations are completed.

"The Board has no evidence at this point to indicate that that is the case," Garrick wrote. "It is not clear how a change in a single parameter would affect the DOE's (Energy Department's) estimates of repository performance, which are based on a range of values."

Garrick also said problems with quality assurance, a program designed to to assure the accuracy of Yucca research, "may or may not significantly affect the DOE's technical and scientific findings."

Congress created the board to perform technical oversight of the Yucca Mountain project but it does not regulate it.

Investigations by the Interior and Energy department's inspector generals' offices, along with the FBI and U.S. attorney's office are still ongoing and may not be finished for several months. Porter's subcommittee is also working on its own investigation.