Yucca Mountain News Clips
Thursday, May 29, 2003
---------------------------
Las Vegas SUN
May 29, 2003
Counties dispute new audit on Yucca
By Mary Manning
<manning@lasvegassun.com>
LAS VEGAS SUN
Officials from Nevada counties said they disagree with a new audit that questions how they spent $3.3 million of federal oversight funds for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository project.
The audit said Clark, Nye and Lincoln counties spent the funds to hire lobbyists and attorneys unrelated to project oversight, sponsored events and rallies in protest of the repository and bought supplies and services unrelated to Yucca Mountain.
The Department of Energy's Inspector General's Office released the audit Wednesday.
The inspector general tracked a total of $12 million in 2001 and 2002 given to three of 10 local governments for oversight of the federal government's proposed high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.
The amounts in question total $132,296 in expenses for Clark County, $1.1 million for Lincoln and $2 million for Nye.
Margaret Chu, DOE's national nuclear waste program director, said the agency plans to either recover the funds or deduct funds from future grants and monitor future county spending.
Inspector General Gregory Friedman said Wednesday that the federal money should have been used by the counties to review Yucca Mountain's impact on local economies, public health and safety and the environment.
Other valid uses of the money can include covering requests for assistance for project impact studies and provision of information to Nevada residents and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham on project activities as well as monitoring, testing or evaluation of the Energy Department's scientific program.
But the audit indicated that not all of the money was being used for those purposes.
"Overall, the audit findings suggest that this program is not fully achieving its intended results of assisting local governments in providing oversight of the Yucca Mountain project," Friedman said.
The audit also faulted the Energy Department for failing to monitor county work on the project.
The DOE funds the counties based on plans for the project drawn up by local government officials.
Irene Navis, Clark County Nuclear Waste Division director, said the county could account for the concerns in the report.
"We are going to respond. We disagree with the findings," Navis said.
For example, the audit said that Clark County hired a law firm for $10,000 to research legal impacts from shipping nuclear waste through Nevada. Instead, the attorneys reported on how to challenge and attack the DOE's environmental impact statement, Friedman said.
Navis said that the county hired a Phoenix firm with expertise in environmental impacts to examine the county's list of concerns about nuclear waste transport.
"We hired them to keep us out of trouble," she said.
As for lobby activities, Navis said former Clark County Commissioner Dario Herrera and current commission Chairwoman Mary Kincaid Chauncey had both visited congressional offices in Washington D.C.
"That's just introducing the county policy perspective firsthand," Navis said.
DOE and Clark County officials have already met and are starting to resolve the issues, the audit said.
A Lincoln County consulting firm received reimbursements for research associated with lawsuits filed against the Yucca Mountain project, the audit said.
In Lincoln County a consultant hired to work on computer programs related to Yucca performed work for the district attorney's office and the grants administration office.
Lincoln County consultants also were paid from the nuclear waste funds for economic development, a local hospital assessment and community development unrelated to the repository, the audit said.
Lincoln officials also hired a consultant for $82,496 to help develop land for a master-planned community, the audit said.
Lincoln officials also transferred $15,000 of oversight funds to the county's Regional Development Authority, the audit said.
Lincoln County Commission Chairman Spencer Hafen was not immediately available for comment.
Lincoln County resident Louis Benezet said the audit should be a wake-up call to county officials.
"Percentage-wise, Lincoln County was high on the list for expenditures," said Benezet, who opposes the repository.
Nye County consultants helping to develop a community protection plan in case the repository is built also lobbied to fund a research and development center, tried to change a section of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and transferred federal land for other projects.
Nye County Commission Chairman Henry Neth said that the inspector general and local officials interpret financial reports differently.
"The bottom line is, there is no waste and no fraud," Neth said. "It's just a difference in interpretation by the county and the inspector general. We are preparing a response."
The audit also said that the counties kept interest earned from the nuclear waste funds, which should have been returned to the fund.
Clark County has nearly $1.6 million in interest earned on nuclear waste funds as of August 2002, the audit said. Over the past 11 years, Southern Nevada has a total cash balance from the fund of $4.6 million.
Lincoln County had $370,000 on hand, including $35,000 in interest and Nye County had $1.5 million with $141,7000 in interest.
Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and John Ensign, R-Nev., said they had not had time to review the audit. They said they learned about it before a field hearing in Las Vegas Wednesday on scientific quality issues at Yucca Mountain.
The recent audit is similar to three others, two performed by the General Accounting Office in 1990 and 1996 and an independent audit of Nye County in 2001.
---------------------------
Las Vegas SUN
May 29, 2003
Senators vow to pressure reluctant Yucca critics
By Steve Kanigher
<steve@lasvegassun.com>
LAS VEGAS SUN
Nevada's senators and a "60 Minutes" film crew got an earful of complaints about research at the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear dump site Wednesday but they want to hear more, from two people who refused to show up at their hearing.
The witnesses who did appear at the Senate field hearing in Las Vegas complained that the Department of Energy, which has been studying the waste dump capabilities of the site, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, hasn't followed its own research game plans and has failed to correct chronic problems in a timely fashion.
But the absence of two other scheduled witnesses who pulled out earlier this week -- Robert Clark, who once ran DOE's quality assurance program and Donald Harris, an auditor with DOE contractor Navarro Research and Engineering -- drew the ire of Reid and Ensign.
They said they will use whatever means possible to compel the two experts to testify about alleged quality control problems with the nuclear waste project.
Democrat Reid, the Senate minority whip, and Republican Ensign, both opponents of plans to ship the nation's high-level nuclear waste to Nevada, blamed the DOE for applying pressure against potential whistle-blowers. They said they will even consider subpoenas if that's what it takes to get Clark and Harris to appear before the Senate Appropriation subcommittee on Energy and Water Development. The subcommittee conducted the field hearing even though only Reid and Ensign were present for it.
"We're doing whatever we can to see what we can do to compel them to testify," Ensign said. "We're looking at all legal and political means.
"Scientists are afraid to question the science because they're afraid of losing grants."
Reid said he and Ensign also plan to determine whether the DOE -- which was not invited to testify at the field hearing -- violated any federal whistle-blower laws.
"There will be other proceedings," Reid said. "That's for sure. We'll apply whatever political pressure we can."
The two senators said they hoped the sparsely attended field hearing in the Clark County Commission chambers would raise national as well as local awareness about problems with the proposed dump. The national attention may be provided in part by CBS' "60 Minutes" television news magazine, which had a film crew present as part of a plan to air a future segment on the controversies surrounding Yucca Mountain.
The witnesses who did appear were Robin Nazzaro, director of Natural Resources and Environment for the U.S. General Accounting Office, Allison Macfarlane, senior research associate with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Security Studies Program, and William Belke, a retired Nuclear Regulatory Commission official who served as its senior on-site licensing representative for the Yucca Mountain project.
Nazzaro said the GAO, the nonpartisan federal government watchdog, is still in its preliminary stages of an investigation into Yucca Mountain's quality assurance program, which is supposed to make sure the research is performed properly and adequately analyzed. But she said that the DOE's "track record of correcting problems with its quality assurance program is less than favorable."
She gave the example of a DOE computer software program whose problems have not been corrected since first discovered in 1998. Nazzaro said the failure of DOE to correct problems in a timely fashion cast doubts about whether the agency would be able to meet its goal of submitting an application to the NRC by 2004 to construct the repository.
"DOE's unsuccessful efforts to address recurring quality assurance problems, the identification of new problems since the issuance of its 2002 improvement plan, and NRC's recent comment that DOE's quality assurance program has yet to produce outcomes necessary to ensure that this program meets NRC requirements do not instill much confidence that the quality assurance problems will soon be resolved," Nazzaro said in a prepared statement.
Of 293 key technical issues that still needed to be resolved as of March, the DOE had developed strategies to tackle only 77 of those items, she said. Nazzaro also said the fact that $130 million was cut from DOE's Yucca Mountain budget this year raised doubts that the agency would be able to meet its deadline for submitting an application to the NRC.
"As we see these recurring problems DOE doesn't seem to be able to correct them," Nazzaro said. "The accountability issue has been a pervasive problem at DOE in terms of the accountability of contractors."
Macfarlane criticized DOE for failing to publish its Yucca Mountain studies in a way that would allow "peer review" by outside scientists. She said the proposed repository is the largest scientific project with which she is familiar that hasn't been properly reviewed by outsiders.
One area that she said hasn't been properly analyzed is the effect seeping water could have on the casks that are being designed to store the nuclear waste underground. Without naming names, she also told the senators that scientists have been pressured to not challenge DOE's Yucca Mountain work. They fear retaliation if they do challenge it, and there's good reason for that fear, she said.
Some of the scientists who have collected data on water-related issues that contradict DOE findings, have "taken a bashing" from the agency, Macfarlane said.
"DOE could improve the science by offering competitive research grants to research institutions," she said.
Belke likewise criticized DOE for failing to correct problems in a timely fashion and for retaliating against potential whistle-blowers.
"I don't think people should have fear of retaliation on their jobs," he said. "NRC management should also be more proactive and pay attention to deficiencies. The same deficiencies occur again and again and again.
"Right now the DOE has to prove they can do the little things. If they can't do the little things, they won't be able to do the big things in the future."
---------------------------
Las Vegas SUN
May 29, 2003
Letter: Yucca driven by politics, payoffs
The May 22 story, "Nuke power big help to campaigns," explains the wrongheaded energy policy that promotes building five new nuclear reactors to produce electricity. Making it worse are the guaranteed loans by the American people.
Nuclear power is essential to produce 20 percent of the electricity we use, but in the future it should be supplanted by solar, wind, biomass, geothermal and clean-coal technology.
The Achilles' heel of nuclear power is the toxic waste. Also, nuclear power is not safe as was demonstrated by Three Mile Island in 1979, and it costs more than gas, oil and coal.
We know that politics, not science, has a lot to do with policies toward the nuclear power industry, including Yucca Mountain. We must now add payoffs to politicians, both Democrats and Republicans.
Frank Perna
---------------------------
Las Vegas Review Journal
May 29, 2003
Counties accused of misusing federal Yucca Mountain funds
DOE auditors say money cannot be used on lobbying, lawsuits or to seek allies against site
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Three Nevada counties misspent $3.3 million in federal money as they monitored the government's bid to bury nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, inspectors said in a report released Wednesday.
Auditors for the Energy Department inspector general concluded money was improperly spent on lobbying, lawsuit research, and other activities not allowed for local governments given funds to oversee the Yucca Mountain Project.
The examiners challenged expenditures that included using Yucca oversight money to pay consultants on unrelated projects and to lobby for repository benefits.
A 14-page audit sent to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham challenged $2.08 million in Nye County spending for 2001 and 2002, and $1.13 million spent by Lincoln County. The audit also questioned $132,296 spent by Clark County.
Penalties could force rural Lincoln and Nye counties to shut down projects that measure the impact the proposed nuclear waste repository will have on residents, officials said.
"If they want their money back that they've given us, unless the county funds us out of general funds, we'd shut the doors," said Les Bradshaw, Nye County director of natural resources and federal facilities.
Officials from the counties defended their spending and said they plan to protest.
"We went through to link every expenditure over the two years to one of the allowable uses," said Caliente Mayor Kevin Phillips of Lincoln County.
Irene Navis, head of the Clark County nuclear waste planning division, said auditors disregarded explanations for charges they disallowed.
"There are some inaccuracies in this report," she said.
Energy Department managers will make final decisions on what expenses to disallow and whether the counties will be required to make reimbursements or have future payments reduced. DOE-county meetings are set for next month.
"The unauthorized expenditures will be recovered, or that amount will be withheld from future direct payments," Margaret Chu, director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, said in a memo attached to the audit.
Nine Nevada counties and Inyo County in California have received Yucca Mountain payments for 15 years, dividing $12 million in 2001 and 2002. Congress last year directed DOE to examine how they were spending the money.
Anticipating audit results, DOE already has withheld $1 million from Nye County and $400,000 from Lincoln County, about half of what each projected to receive this year for Yucca Mountain oversight.
Navis said $132,296 has been withheld from Clark County, a small part of its $1.8 million allocation this year.
Chu asked DOE lawyers for an opinion on proper use of county surpluses and accrued interest after auditors challenged the counties' practice of carrying over excess funding and keeping interest gained on that money.
Henry Neth, Nye County Commission chairman, said county spending corresponded to annual work plans approved by the Energy Department. But auditors criticized Yucca Mountain Project managers, saying they "had not sufficiently monitored" the counties.
Federal law allows the state and county governments to spend grant money to monitor DOE site work, to communicate with residents and the secretary of energy, to evaluate repository impact, and to form requests for impact aid. They cannot spend on lobbying, lawsuits or to seek allies against the project.
The inspectors challenged $865,000 Lincoln County spent on consultants who they said researched potential lawsuits and conducted other work beyond assessing the repository's impact.
The inspector general questioned Nye County's use of federal money to form a "community protection plan." Although the plan focuses on the repository's community impact, it also was used to lobby for a county research center and federal land transfers, auditors said.
Auditors challenged Clark County spending to meet with Yucca opponent groups in Washington and for the city of Las Vegas to research lawsuits and build relationships with other cities along potential nuclear waste routes to Nevada.
---------------------------
Las Vegas Review Journal
May 29, 2003
Field Hearing: Reid, Ensign say DOE behind no-shows
Official denies two witnesses were discouraged from appearing
By Keith Rogers
Review-Journal
Nevada's senators accused the Department of Energy of quashing testimony Wednesday by two witnesses who were scheduled to speak but failed to show up at a field hearing on quality assurance problems in the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project.
"These are people who wanted to come and testify but they are afraid," said Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., who arranged the hearing conducted by the Senate's energy and water subcommittee at the Clark County Government Center.
He was referring to former DOE quality assurance director Robert Clark and Donald Harris, an auditor for a Yucca Mountain Project quality assurance contractor, Navarro Research and Engineering.
Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., joined Reid in criticizing the Energy Department for not resolving quality assurance problems found by the audit team before proceeding with plans to build a multi-billion dollar repository to entomb the nation's highly radioactive waste in the mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
"These are two witnesses who very much support the Yucca Mountain Project. No one could question their motives," Ensign noted before three other witnesses described a history of problems with designing, collecting data and predicting performance of the planned repository.
"I am concerned that responsible workers ... are being retaliated against by DOE and its contractors," Ensign said in his opening remarks.
Both senators said they will explore ways to get concerns by Clark and Harris on the record and look into whether any whistle-blower laws have been broken by government officials.
Clark, who was transferred after he had urged DOE officials to correct deficiencies in the project's quality assurance program, could not be reached late Wednesday.
Harris said through his wife that he had no comment.
An Energy Department spokesman in Washington, D.C., Joe Davis, denied that the two scheduled witnesses had been discouraged from participating.
"These witnesses can testify at any time if they choose to do so and we did not stifle anybody," Davis said.
He referred to a letter Friday in which Margaret Chu, director of DOE's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, answered Reid's request for the pair's testimony, that states, "We have given no direction to Mr. Clark or Navarro, Mr. Harris' employer, regarding this hearing."
Davis said the two-hour hearing accomplished nothing other than to demonstrate that Reid and Ensign oppose Yucca Mountain.
"I think the department has demonstrated that the science behind the Yucca Mountain decision is sound and that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, who I don't speak for, will make the ultimate decision on whether the science is sound," Davis said. "We believe it is and we're moving forward."
But Bill Belke, a former senior on-site representative for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission who for seven years looked over the shoulders of Yucca Mountain quality assurance workers, told the senators that DOE drug its feet in correcting problems with data, software and modeling. He said some actions by DOE officials had a chilling effect on workers.
"I was told to suck it up," Belke said after stating, "I think people should be held accountable for actions they are performing."
In a four-page written statement, Belke outlined his experience in monitoring the project while DOE struggled to resolve technical issues that must be fixed for a belated license application review now expected by the end of 2004.
His written testimony lists nine areas of deficiencies and errors in the scientific process, from collecting valid geological samples at the site to "erroneous or questionable calculations found in final technical reports."
"DOE needs to provide confidence not only to the NRC but all affected units, that the little things can be done correctly and down the road, the big things will be done correctly," according to Belke's written testimony.
Another observer who testified, Robin Nazzaro, director of natural resources and environment for the General Accounting Office, which is the investigative arm of Congress, said DOE's track record for correcting quality assurance problems "is less than desirable."
She noted that of 293 key technical issues with the project that were found in the late-1990s, only 77 had been closed or resolved as of April.
A third witness, Allison MacFarlane, co-director of the Yucca Mountain Project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the project is fundamentally flawed because politics instead of science prevailed in the decision to study Yucca Mountain as the only repository site.
Among other things, she said, DOE has underestimated how much water could infiltrate the repository floor and how quickly it could accumulate there, potentially corroding waste canisters and carrying off deadly radioactive materials.
---------------------------
Reno Gazette-Journal
May 29, 2003
Reid, Ensign use Vegas hearing to air nuclear dump complaints
Associated Press
LAS VEGAS — Nevada´s U.S. senators vowed Wednesday to keep investigating allegations of quality control problems and whistleblower intimidation at the desert site picked to bury the nation´s nuclear waste.
“There´ll be other proceedings, that´s for sure,’ Democratic Sen. Harry Reid said after 90 minutes of testimony from three of five witnesses he and Republican Sen. John Ensign invited to speak at a Senate energy and water subcommittee hearing in Las Vegas.
Ensign said the absence of two witnesses — former Yucca Mountain quality assurance auditor Donald Harris and project contractor Robert Clark — showed an Energy Department “culture of retaliation’ against whistleblowers.
“These people wanted to come and testify,’ Reid said as local access cable television cameras focused on two empty seats reserved for Harris and Clark in the Clark County Commission chambers. “They were afraid they would lose their jobs.’
Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis in Washington, D.C., denied Yucca Mountain whistleblowers have been intimidated, and he declared the quality assurance program sound.
He said Energy Department officials were not asked to testify to defend the program and pointed to a May 20 letter to Reid from Kristi Hodges, a quality assurance auditor at Yucca Mountain.
“She found no technical smoking guns in the Yucca Mountain program,’ Davis said.
William Belke, a retired Nuclear Regulatory Commission oversight officer at Yucca Mountain, told Reid and Ensign he believes in nuclear power.
However, he submitted a list of shortcomings he said he witnessed in his 15 years with the project.
He cited software, computer and modeling program errors; improperly qualified technicians; and pressure to meet schedules so administrators could collect performance bonuses.
“The same problems occur again and again and again,’ he said.
Davis denied data was lost because of computer problems and said more than 250 credentialed experts had been studying Yucca Mountain for decades.
“The bottom line is, the science is sound and it proved Yucca Mountain is suitable for storing nuclear waste,’ Davis said. The Energy Department plans by the end of 2004 to submit to the NRC an application to operate the nuclear repository, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Robin Nazzaro, director of an ongoing congressional General Accounting Office study of the Yucca Mountain project, said she doubted the Energy Department could meet the 2004 date. She called the Energy Department´s quality assurance program “less than favorable.’
“We´re not saying that Yucca Mountain is a bad idea,’ she said. “We´re not saying the science is bad. We´re saying they´re not able to prove it.’
---------------------------
KTNV
May 28, 2003
Yucca Mountain Update
Mark Sayre reporting
There is another black eye for the proposed high-level nuclear waste site at Yucca Mountain. The General Accounting Office report says that the Department of Energy's track record in fixing problems at Yucca Mountain is "less than favorable."
Yucca Mountain is the site about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas that has been picked by the Bush Administration to the permanent storage site for all of the nation's nuclear waste. But the GAO says the department's quality control procedures need improvement.
A hearing Wednesday was called by Nevada's two U.S. Senators.
---------------------------
Las Vegas SUN
May 28, 2003
Reid, Ensign use Vegas hearing to air nuclear dump complaints
By Ken Ritter
Associated Press
LAS VEGAS (AP) - Nevada's U.S. senators vowed Wednesday to keep investigating allegations of quality control problems and whistleblower intimidation at the desert site picked to bury the nation's nuclear waste.
"There'll be other proceedings, that's for sure," Democratic Sen. Harry Reid said after 90 minutes of testimony from three of five witnesses he and Republican Sen. John Ensign invited to speak at a Senate energy and water subcommittee hearing in Las Vegas.
Ensign said the absence of two witnesses - former Yucca Mountain quality assurance auditor Donald Harris and project contractor Robert Clark - showed an Energy Department "culture of retaliation" against whistleblowers.
"These people wanted to come and testify," Reid said as local access cable television cameras focused on two empty seats reserved for Harris and Clark in the Clark County Commission chambers. "They were afraid they would lose their jobs."
Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis in Washington, D.C., denied Yucca Mountain whistleblowers have been intimidated, and declared the quality assurance program sound.
He noted that Energy Department officials were not asked to testify to defend the program, and pointed to a May 20 letter to Reid from Kristi Hodges, a quality assurance auditor at Yucca Mountain.
"She found no technical smoking guns in the Yucca Mountain program," Davis said.
William Belke, a retired Nuclear Regulatory Commission oversight officer at Yucca Mountain, told Reid and Ensign he believes in nuclear power.
However, he submitted a list of shortcomings he said he witnessed in his 15 years with the project.
He cited software, computer and modeling program errors; improperly qualified technicians; and pressure to meet schedules so administrators could collect performance bonuses.
"The same problems occur again and again and again," Belke said.
Davis denied data was lost due to computer problems, and said more than 250 credentialed experts had been studying Yucca Mountain for more than two decades.
"The bottom line is, the science is sound and it proved Yucca Mountain is suitable for storing nuclear waste," Davis said. The Energy Department plans by the end of 2004 to submit to the NRC an application to operate the nuclear repository, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Robin Nazzaro, director of an ongoing congressional General Accounting Office study of the Yucca Mountain project, said she doubted the Energy Department could meet the 2004 date. She called the Energy Department's quality assurance program "less than favorable."
"We're not saying that Yucca Mountain is a bad idea," she said. "We're not saying the science is bad. We're saying they're not able to prove it."
Allison Macfarlane, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher, submitted an 11-page statement focusing on technical elements, such as the rate of water seepage into containment chambers drilled 1,000 feet below Yucca Mountain.
"Water is the enemy of the (radioactive waste) containment canisters," she said.
Reid and Ensign said radioactive waste should remain stored at nuclear power plants around the nation until the safety of transporting and storing it in a single site is proved.
The Energy Department plans to entomb 77,000 tons of commercial, industrial and military waste at the site at the western edge of the Nevada Test Site. Project planners say it will remain radioactive for 10,000 years.
Since Congress and President Bush picked Yucca Mountain last year, Nevada has filed a series of federal lawsuits against the plan.
---
On the Net: Energy Department: http://www.doe.gov
Nevada opposition: http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste
Yucca Mountain project: http://www.ymp.gov
---------------------------
KVBC
May 28, 2003
Nevada's US Senators Trying To Keep Nuke Waste Out
Some key critics are going on the record concerning problems at Yucca Mountain. Nnevada's two US Senators are hoping to get enough information to convince the rest of the members of congress that Yucca Mountain should not be the nation's dumping ground for nuclear waste. They held a congressional hearing here in Las Vegas, and News 3's Dana Wagner was there.
Senators Harry Reid and John Ensign organized the hearing in light of recent reports that auditors have found problems at Yucca Mountain. They're problems that might make Yucca Mountain unsuitable for nuclear waste. Some auditors say there's been a concerted effort to silence and discredit the whistle blowers. Today, we got a taste of what's happening.
"You can see if you look at the reports, that the same deficiencies are carried again, again, and again, and there's no action to help these by my management." Three witnesses. None against the idea of Yucca Mountain per se, but all with problems in how things are being done at the site. "Continued reliance on data that's unreliable or inaccurate could lead to adverse health, safety and environmental affects in the course of the ten thousand year licensing period."
But the committee never heard from two people...Donald Harris and Robert Clark. They are two auditors who reportedly brought up problems at Yucca Mountain and were apparently convinced not the testify. "The DOE has so little regard for the quality of the work being done at Yucca Mountain, the DOE would rather silence than support their own employees."
But Senator Reid did get a letter from another auditor, Kristi Hodges, that wrote "The project appears to be in a downward spiral," and, "Project management appeared to give up on fixing the problems and instead pursued a strategy of shoot the messenger."
"There's something deep in the bowels of the Department of Energy. We don't care what's being shown. We're going forward with this project regardless of what it shows." A professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Techonology testified the science at Yucca Mountain is being influenced by politics. Another person testified the timeline is more important to the Department of Energy than the quality of the project. No question, the DOE is racing the calendar."
They're scheduled to submit their license application late next year. No one from the Department of Energy was called to testify before the committee. We called them on the phone today to get a response, but they never called us back.
---------------------------
State of Nevada
Agency for Nuclear Projects
www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/
nwpo@nuc.state.nv.us
775-687-3744
---------------------------