New e-mails: Yucca 'flunked'

[NVMojo]

So much for that lying sack of crap Bush and his sound science ...

WASHINGTON -- A new set of e-mails written by Yucca Mountain employees shows the Energy Department knew the project "flunked" because the mountain couldn't live up to its scientific billing, an attorney for Nevada says.

E-mails found on a public database of documents supporting the Energy Department's plan to request a license to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, show how scientists came to accept that the mountain itself couldn't keep moisture away from stored nuclear waste as planned.

A 1997 message from department scientist Larry Rickertsen, titled "Real Trouble Ahead," says: "The answer is clearer than ever. Engineering has to do the job."

It's a key point because the original plan, approved by Congress, was to store high-level nuclear waste in a geological repository, meaning the rock would stop radiation.

Egan said the messages provide missing details about how program managers and scientists decided to change the rules in the late 1990s, shifting the program away from what Congress had directed them to find -- a waste repository reliant on "natural" rock barriers to keep water away from the waste -- to one that relied heavily on man-made "engineered" barriers, such as high-tech metal waste containers and drip shields.

more....

http://www.lasvegassun.com/dossier/nuke/

[mike_c]

1. there have been multitudes of lies told by several administrations...

...about Yucca Mtn. and the disposal issue more broadly. The Bushco cabel doesn't have a lock on responsibility for that mess.

[NNadir]

2. This is a pretty specious argument.

The energy wasting citizens of Nevada who are perfectly willing to have the entire atmosphere of the planet destroyed rather than accept a miniscule risk (this while conspicuously consuming power) are trying to represent a few forged documents as proof that Yucca mountain is unsafe.

These documents are about whether or not water can get into the mountain. Maybe it can so what?

The long term behavior of nuclear fission products is well known from the fossil reactors at Oklo in Gabon, which are known to be billions of years old, and which are known to have spent much of geological history as one of the wettest places on earth.

The citizens of Nevada are simply appealing to ignorance to shuffle of responsibility for their own wasteful consumption of energy to the citizens of those states where people actually are dying from coal. This is pure NIMBY and nothing else.

This isn't about two or three people on some theoretical ranch in the next two millenia who might face a 1 in 100,000 higher chance of an obscure type of cancer. This is about the collapse of the atomsphere right now. If the citizens of Las Vegas are so damned concerned, I suggest they turn off that percentage of billboards and casino displays in Las Vegas that are powered by the Palo Verde nuclear station in Arizona.

[mike_c]

3. spot on rant

:woohoo:

[struggle4progress]

5. If you are right, you have a splendid opportunity at wealth and fame:

the professional modeling community has apparently been unable to establish, with detailed computer simulation, that the Yucca Mountain site will contain the waste for (say) 10,000 years.

You, on the other hand, seems to suggest that the waste won't migrate more than (the order of) ten meters in over a billion years. If you provide a scientifically defensible model that leads with certainty to this conclusion, you will be your favorite industry's hero, able to command splendid fees by snapping your fingers.

Back in the real world, of course, it is precisely the fact that the models are not clearly predicting long-term containment of the waste that resulted in the dishonest consultant behavior which is the subject of the news account. And perhaps the fact that the nuclear industry itself spent much of 1990s, arguing that models for more than 10,000 years were unnecessary, should have suggested to us some real insider anxiety about what models might reveal.

[struggle4progress]

4. Employees in Yucca Mountain e-mail scandal will not testify (4/11/05)

From CongressDaily

Three scientists involved with e-mails about falsifying documents on Nevada's Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump will not be made available to testify before a congressional panel, the Interior Department said Friday.

The department's U.S. Geological Survey also released a letter from the panel that reveals the scientists' names for the first time, the Associated Press reported.

The letter sent Thursday by Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev. -- who chairs a House Government Reform subcommittee looking into the matter -- requests the presence of Joe A. Hevesi, Alan L. Flint and Lorraine E. Flint "to meet with subcommittee staff regarding statements contained in the e-mails in question." <snip>

http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0405/041105cdpm2.htm


LuAnne Sorrell, Reporter
Congressional Hearing on Yucca Mountain Canceled

A hearing into allegations that documents about the Yucca Mountain project were falsified has been canceled. Officials from the Department of the Interior denied a request by Congressman Jon Porter to speak to the scientists accused of falsifying reports.

Clark County launched that investigation after officials at the Department of Energy announced, last month, they found emails from scientists admitting they falsified reports. And what the county found is that problems at the U.S. Geological survey are nothing new. <snip>

http://www.klas-tv.com/Global/story.asp?S=3200721&nav=168XYa10


Author of Yucca Mountain e-mails got $4,900 for new assignment

By Erica Werner
ASSOCIATED PRESS
1:56 p.m. April 12, 2005

WASHINGTON – A scientist who wrote e-mails about falsifying work on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project was paid $4,900 for a Yucca assignment he got after the e-mails became known, the U.S. Geological Survey said Tuesday. <snip>

Hevesi was a principal author of e-mails written between 1998 and 2000 by scientists studying how water moved through the proposed waste dump 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

In the e-mails to colleagues, Hevesi discussed making up facts, deleting inconvenient data and keeping two sets of files – "the ones that will keep (quality assurance) happy and the ones that were actually used."

USGS Director Charles Groat assured lawmakers at a hearing last week that the scientists involved were no longer working on Yucca Mountain. A day later, USGS and the Energy Department disclosed that Hevesi had actually been given a new, 40-hour assignment in March, several days after Energy learned of the e-mails. An Energy spokeswoman said last week that Hevesi never actually billed any hours for the assignment. <snip>

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/nation/20050412-1356-wst-yuccamountain.html


This is the familiar game from the nuclear boys: lie and stonewall, then whine that the public is irrational and should trust them ...