I hear they are considering Hot Springs as an alternate site:
Scientist May Have Falsified Yucca Papers
Fri Mar 18,11:37 AM ET U.S. National - AP
By ERICA WERNER, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - E-mails from a government hydrologist to his supervisor, copied to several co-workers, led the Energy Department to believe that documents on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump might have been falsified, government officials said.
The documents concerned 6-year-old U.S. Geological Survey (news - web sites) studies of water movement in the planned Nevada dump. USGS (news - web sites) scientists validated Energy Department conclusions that water seepage was relatively slow, so radiation would be less likely to escape.
Other studies have pointed to faster water movement. If it turns out there was document falsification and it casts doubt on USGS' conclusions, that could undercut the Energy Department's case for Yucca.
The USGS employees remained on the job Thursday as government investigators and outside scientists tried to determine the seriousness of the alleged falsifications.
"We don't know whether the science was actually compromised," said USGS spokeswoman A.B. Wade.
After a series of setbacks, the government already has backed off a planned 2010 completion date for its plan to bury the nation's nuclear waste in the Nevada desert.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Sen. John Ensign (news, bio, voting record), R-Nev., sent letters to the FBI (news - web sites) and Justice Department (news - web sites) asking them to investigate and seize all Yucca records from government agencies. Rep. Shelley Berkley (news, bio, voting record), D-Nev., asked Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman to appoint a third-party agency to investigate.
"It's very clear that the licensing is not going to be able to go forward in a timely manner," Reid said in an interview.
"We'll review their letters and respond appropriately," said Energy Department spokeswoman Anne Womack.
The potentially falsified documents were discovered by Bechtel SAIC employees working on contract for the Energy Department as it prepares its license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to open the dump. DOE planned to submit the license application last year but missed that date and is now aiming for the end of 2005.
While using a sampling process to review several million e-mails, the contractors came across about 20 suspicious messages between May 1998 and March 2000 from a hydrologist working with a team of 10 or more other scientists on Yucca water studies, Wade said.
The e-mails were from the hydrologist to his supervisor, and co-workers were copied. The e-mails suggested the scientist was falsifying documents related to the study.
It wasn't clear whether the supervisor or other co-workers were actively engaged in the exchange, and the author of the e-mails is the focus of suspicion, Wade said.
She said a total of about 10 employees were privy to the e-mails and all but one still worked for USGS. |
