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.
"They (the e-mails) show the site not only flunked but it flunked spectacularly and there is nothing they can do to stop it," said Joe Egan, a Washington attorney representing the state in its fight against Yucca Mountain. "I think this is going to go down in history as the greatest scientific fraud of all time."
Egan, who represents the state on Yucca issues, and his staff found the new batch of e-mails in the project's public document database.
"These e-mails are part of the back-and-forth that is reflective of any collaborative scientific process," said department spokeswoman Anne Womack Kolton. "As part of the license application that DOE (the Energy Department) is developing and will submit to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, we will thoroughly outline the safety basis for Yucca Mountain.
"DOE's application will address all appropriate public health and safety, scientific and technical issues as part of the NRC's thorough and public review process."
These e-mails are different from those written by U.S. Geological Survey employees and now under investigation by the Energy and Interior Departments and the FBI. But Egan said they are just as important and give more ammunition to the state's fight against the proposed repository.
In September 1997, one scientist urged another to stop clinging to the notion that Yucca's rock tunnel walls could isolate waste, telling him that Yucca Mountain itself "cannot do the job."
"I know you are trying to dodge the geologic disposal problem, and steering clear of fatal flaw type concerns," the scientist wrote to his colleague. "But the simple fact is that the only purpose of the natural system now is to provide a benign environment for the engineering."
Egan said the messages show the radiation exposure will be a lot higher and come quicker than originally predicted and would not be able to meet a radiation protection standard.
"We knew what they did but didn't know how to prove it," Egan said. "This is what we are going to prove in the licensing hearings. There's no mystery to this anymore."
In the e-mails, scientists discuss how the department will need to use the drip shields and containers because the potential radiation exposure levels has jumped from a "few hundred" millirem a year to "tens of rem/yr (or thousands)." Their research discovered water flows through the mountain faster than they expected creating "indefensible flow models."
"The beauty of the drip-shield approach is that I don't need to know that stuff any more," according to a March 1997 e-mail from Rickertsen.
Yucca critics have argued for years that the Energy Department abandoned its pursuit of proving that a purely geologic repository could isolate waste once it became apparent Yucca couldn't do the job. Critics say the department then embraced a plan that relied on a combination of protection from the rock and man-made or "engineered barriers."
Bob Loux, executive director of the state's Agency of Nuclear Projects, has said the term "geologic" is key because it set Yucca apart from other sites designated as suitable to store the waste. Nevada's attorneys used these arguments as part of the state's six lawsuits argued before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in January 2004.
Nevada sued the Energy Department for changing the Yucca Mountain guidelines in 2001 to rely on man-made protection, and then sued the Nuclear Regulatory Commission when it changed its licensing rules to fit the department's man-made barrier additions.
Department officials have argued that they always intended to rely on both natural barriers and robust waste containers.
Ultimately, in a ruling last year, the court declared the Nevada argument "moot" because Congress approved the site and the president signed it into law.
But if the project moves into a Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing hearing, Nevada officials will use these e-mails to resurrect the argument in challenging Yucca. The NRC will ultimately would decide whether the site is safe, and whether to grant a license to the Energy Department.
"You can pass legislation based on lies and cheating but you can't get a license based on lies and cheating," Egan said. "It will still fail the test of science."
Egan said the department lied to Congress, telling lawmakers it had a suitable site when it knew it did not.
Nevada lawyers plan to sing a familiar refrain: If the Energy Department acknowledges that it is relying on engineered barriers, then it could bury the waste anywhere, including, as some Yucca critics have sarcastically suggested, the basement of the department's Washington headquarters.
Egan said his staff has discovered new e-mails by searching the Energy Department's Yucca database using the word "falsification" since the Energy Department announced last month it discovered USGS employees may have made up some scientific data.
In a 1998 e-mail, the scientist describes how a manager has said "calculations without the waste packages are not allowed."
"That kind of calculation will let the state argue we are engineering a bad mountain," according to one 1998 e-mail from Rickertsen, quoting his manager, Steve Brocoum.
Attempts to reach the scientists were unsuccessful.
The department was supposed to use just the mountain to contain the radiation, but this conversation not only shows that measurements would not meet requirements without the waste packages but that it knew the state would use that point.
The Energy Department continues to assemble the license application for the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca. It aims to have the application completed by the end of the year, although the schedule may depend on the outcome of e-mail investigations and the issuance of a new radiation protection standard by the Environmental Protection Agency.
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