The proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada, already behind schedule and mired in controversy, suffered another setback in March when Department of Energy lawyers discovered a series of e-mails indicating that some scientific data relating to the long-term environmental safety of the site had been falsified. The e-mails, between US Geological Survey (USGS) scientists developing and running modeling programs for the project, are rife with comments about sloppy work and made-up data.
At a hearing before a House subcommittee on the federal workforce and agency reorganization in early April, DOE officials said a preliminary examination led them to conclude that the e-mails weren’t important because the bad data they referred to had not been included in a licensing application for the nuclear waste repository. In written testimony to the subcommittee, Theodore Garrish, deputy director of DOE’s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, said, “We have no evidence that...
