Trade Group Says Yucca Still Viable

May 09 - Las Vegas Review - Journal

Breaking more than a month of public silence, the nuclear industry's trade association says the possibility that quality control documents might have been falsified shouldn't be enough to sink the Yucca Mountain Project.

The accumulation of detailed engineering and research that has gone into the proposed nuclear waste repository "is not dependent on any one scientist's work," said Marvin Fertel, senior vice president of the Nuclear Energy Institute.

"The recent disclosure of quality assurance non-compliance issues by three U.S. Geological Survey scientists, while egregious on its face, is not a basis for questioning the long-term viability of the Yucca Mountain site," Fertel said.

The NEI executive offered the association's view in an April 29 letter to Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman in which he urged continued pursuit of nuclear waste burial at the Yucca site, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The letter was reported Thursday by Platts Nuclear Publications, an energy newsletter group. NEI subsequently made it available.

Fertel was not available for comment Thursday. Spokesman Mitch Singer said he did not know why the trade group chose to speak out at this point.

Bodman and USGS Director Charles Groat disclosed the controversial e-mails on March 16. While two or three NEI staffers have commented individually in recent weeks, Fertel's letter marks the association's first formal reaction.

The association has championed the repository as a key to allowing nuclear power generation to expand in the United States. Critics say the industry has pushed Yucca Mountain in the face of evidence that the site might not be suitable.

The NEI letter to Bodman "is insulting and at the same time hypocritical," said Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev. "It talks about the magnitude of the problem but that they should ignore it and move forward."

Porter is chairman of a House subcommittee investigating e-mail messages written between 1998 and 2000 that discuss document falsification. Inspectors general at the Energy Department and the Department of Interior also are investigating, while the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, which manages the Yucca project, is reviewing work performed by three hydrologists tied to the messages.

"NEI's only concern is to protect the healthy profits of the nuclear industry, not the health and safety of those who live in Nevada or along the routes where nuclear waste would be transported," Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said in a prepared statement.

In the letter, Fertel said the nuclear energy industry found the charges of falsified documents "particularly troubling" and applauded the government's response. He said DOE has improved its quality assurance in the past three years.

"Nonetheless the reviews should validate that measures are in place to protect against such egregious behavior in the future," he wrote.