Editorial: Yucca Mountain continues to fail

Sunday, Nov. 20, 2005 | 8 a.m.

New evidence from the U.S. Energy Department's inspector general underscores -- again -- the vast amount of questionable science and flawed data that has gone into the proposal to build a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain.

In a report dated Nov. 9, Energy Department Inspector General Gregory Friedman said investigators examining e-mails sent among scientists for the project found that some of the messages identified concerns that typically would be marked for further review and resolution. Yet the issues raised in these e-mails did not receive that scrutiny.

One of the e-mails cited says the project's quality assurance office had "just discovered that (quality assurance) software requirements were being ignored." Another electronic missive suggested back-dating documents.

This new information supports ever-growing suspicions among a deepening pool of Yucca critics that scientific data has been fabricated and potential radiation leak risks have been ignored or omitted in the Energy Department's 20-year quest to bury high-level nuclear waste 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The Yucca Mountain project since March has been the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation into allegations that the U.S. Geological Survey falsified underground water data in order to provide support for the project.

The House and Senate showed an apparent loss of appetite for the project earlier this month by cutting $200 million from a $650 million budget request. They also approved $50 million to promote recycling, rather than burying, spent nuclear fuel.

We can only hope that the truth continues to come out and the funding continues to be cut from this dreadfully flawed and nightmarish project.

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