March 17, 2005

Falsified Work Is Suspected at Nuclear Site
 By MATTHEW L. WALD 

WASHINGTON, March 16 - Government employees assigned to predict how water would flow through a proposed nuclear waste repository in Nevada, a crucial part of estimating how fast the radioactive material would leak, may have falsified some of their work, the Energy Department said on Wednesday.

 One of the employees, who worked for the United States Geological Survey, wrote multiple e-mail messages from May 1998 to March 2000 describing how he had fabricated some records, the department said. The messages, whose recipients were not disclosed, came to light recently when contractors working for the department were preparing to submit a license application for the project, at Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

 Officials are hoping to apply for a license by the end of this year, but the discovery could delay that.

The department would not give details on how the work was fabricated and whether it might have helped or hindered the project. Nor would the department give the names of any employees being investigated or say what might happen to them.

Samuel W. Bodman, the energy secretary, said in a statement that the department was reviewing other material by "identified individuals" to see if other work was affected.

At issue are computer models used to predict water infiltration and climate over hundreds of thousands of years. The fabrication was in descriptions of how the models were prepared, the department said.

 Experts said they were dismayed by the announcement.

"It certainly sounds important, when you start talking about falsifying of technical records," said B. John Garrick, chairman of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, an independent panel chartered by Congress to evaluate progress at Yucca and other sites.

 The rate at which the waste packages decay depends on the flow of water around them, Dr. Garrick said, so "that's kind of where the analysis starts" and "that's a very important part of the whole modeling process."

"We can't have that kind of stuff going on and build public confidence in the repository," said Dr. Garrick, an engineer and expert on applying risk science to complex technologies.

 The government has spent more than $6 billion looking for a place to bury nuclear waste, most of that sum to support its contention that Yucca is a good place to bury wastes from civilian nuclear power plants and the manufacture of nuclear weapons. Yucca was supposed to begin accepting fuel in 1998 but now appears to be at least 10 years from opening.

 Because of the delays, which the announcement seems likely to lengthen, the Energy Department is facing billions of dollars in damage lawsuits from utilities that have contracts with the department to take their wastes in exchange for payments.

 A spokeswoman for the department declined to discuss the importance of the models and said she could not describe the fabrications. But opponents, who have already used the court to set back the project, seized on the announcement.

 "It's the heart of the entire project," said Joseph Egan, a lawyer for the State of Nevada. "It's whether or not this project can isolate waste."

 Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, said in a statement, "This proves once again that D.O.E. must cheat and lie in order to make Yucca Mountain look safe."

Mr. Reid is working on legislation that would allow spent reactor fuel to stay at the reactors where it was used, most likely in bulky steel and concrete casks, for extended periods. Some experts argue that the wastes would be easier to bury after about 100 years, by which time they will generate far less heat.

Another expert, who follows the progress of the project on behalf of state utility regulators, said that the falsification might have occurred years ago and that the project managers had tried in the last few years to improve quality control.

 The expert, Brian J. O'Connell of the National Association of Utility Regulatory Commissioners, said, "Good for them for catching this and announcing it, and the apparent intent to pursue an investigation which will bring to light whatever may have been done."

Mr. Bodman, the energy secretary, said: "I am greatly disturbed by the possibility that any of the work related to the Yucca Mountain project may have been falsified. This behavior indicated in the e-mails is completely unacceptable." He said the department's inspector general would investigate.

The Energy Department, which has its roots in the World War II effort to develop the atomic bomb, has extensive experience in nuclear projects but very little with outside regulation. In the case of Yucca, it must prepare an application to be reviewed by a sister agency, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which has strict standards for quality assurance in documentation.

 "The N.R.C. is obsessed with openness and traceability," Dr. Garrick said, adding that for the commission to accept materials as evidence that the repository should be licensed, it would have to know who had done the work and how.

Twenty years ago, the commission forced the abandonment of a nuclear reactor on which $1.6 billion had been spent, and which was described as 97 percent complete, because of quality assurance problems.