By Joe Bauman
Deseret Morning News

Another roadblock went up Wednesday in front of the planned Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository in Nevada, with claims that federal scientific studies were falsified.

The allegations — about the possibility of water seeping into the repository — seem likely to cause further delays and other problems at Yucca Mountain, where the nation's spent nuclear fuel rods were to be permanently stored, theoretically by 2010.

Even as Yucca Mountain continues to be scrutinized, the permitting process has been accelerating for a "temporary" storage facility for the same high-level radioactive waste in Utah's Skull Valley. The latest developments could impact Utah a couple of ways:

• They could make the proposed Private Fuel Storage plant in Tooele County more desirable to the federal government as a site for storing the highly radioactive waste from nuclear power plants. If Yucca Mountain's problems prove insurmountable, that could increase the odds that PFS is not only built, but it might become a permanent storage area, opponents fear.

• Or, a Utah official said Wednesday, the setback could convince the federal government to keep the nuclear waste at the power plants where it is being generated, as has been proposed by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev.

"I think that Skull Valley has always been an emergency Plan B" — a fall-back facility, said activist Chip Ward, a Utah author who has been worried about the PFS plant for years. "It was emergency Plan B for nuclear utilities, and now it may be emergency Plan B for the NRC," the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which may soon approve the PFS proposal. "That's very disturbing," he said.

He called for Utah's U.S. senators to stop supporting the move to store waste at Yucca Mountain. That bandwagon, Ward said, has four flat tires.

Meanwhile, Denise Chancellor, assistant Utah attorney general, said the developments may make "Harry Reid's proposal more attractive, which is to keep the fuel at reactor sites until they can figure it all out." Reid, the Senate minority leader, opposes the Yucca Mountain project in his home state.

Chancellor is leading Utah's nearly 8-year-old fight against a "temporary" spent-fuel dump proposed for the Skull Valley Indian Reservation 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. She said she was filing a motion Wednesday asking the NRC's Atomic Safety Licensing Board to reconsider the danger that the Skull Valley canisters could break open and spread radiation if hit by a crashing aircraft under a military flight path.

In Washington, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman issued a written statement regarding the falsification claims. "I am greatly disturbed by the possibility that any of the work related to the Yucca Mountain project may have been falsified," he said Wednesday.

Little construction has occurred at Yucca Mountain. It has not yet received a license, but in July 2004, a federal appeals court ruled in favor of the site. "Our scientific basis for the Yucca Mountain project is sound," Spencer Abraham, then the secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy, said in response to the dismissal of the legal challenges.

But now the repository's scientific studies are being called into question.

On Wednesday, Chip Groat, director of the U.S. Geological Survey, said e-mails by USGS employees raised serious questions about the review process of scientific studies done six years ago on the site.

Doubts now exist about studies in the 1998-2000 period regarding the likelihood of water seeping into the repository. Employees are alleged "to have committed improprieties after moving into the quality assurance phase" needed for the U.S. Department of Energy's licensing process, says a DOE press release.

"The e-mails indicated that employees involved in studies of water infiltration and climate may have falsified documentation of their work."

Groat said these were serious questions about quality assurance practices. "Two actions are under way to investigate these issues," he said.

"First, I have referred the matter to the inspector general (of the Interior Department) for action. Second, I have initiated an internal review of the allegations."

Once the facts are known, Groat added, "appropriate actions will be taken."

Neither the DOE nor the USGS would speak on the record about the matter, other than official written statements.

A DOE release faxed to the Deseret Morning News said the documentation in question relates to computer modeling involving water infiltration.

"During the document review process associated with the Licensing Support Network preparation for the Yucca Mountain project, DOE contractors discovered multiple e-mails written between May 1998 and March 2000 in which a USGS employee indicated that he had fabricated documentation of his work," said Bodman's formal statement.

The DOE has started checking the data in the study and the documentation that was used. If any work is found deficient, "it will be replaced or supplemented with analysis and documentation that meets appropriate quality assurance standards," he added.

In addition, all of the work completed by anyone identified is being thoroughly reviewed "to ensure that other work was not affected," he said.

Bodman called behavior indicated in the e-mails "completely unacceptable."

He added that the safe handling and disposal of nuclear waste, and the sound scientific basis for the repository's safety analyses, are priorities for the DOE. "All related decisions have been, and will continue to be, based on sound science.

"The fact remains that this country needs a permanent geological nuclear waste repository, and the administration will continue to aggressively pursue that goal. We are committed to the safety and protection of the citizens of Nevada as we pursue the development of the Yucca Mountain project."

Meanwhile, the PFS project in Tooele County seemed to be on a fast track. This facility would be built on land owned by the Skull Valley Band of the Goshute Indian Tribe.

PFS is proposing the temporary storage of nuclear power plant spent fuel rods at the site, with temporary defined as up to 40 years. But another concern of opponents is that storage there might turn out to be permanent.

In February, the NRC Safety and Licensing Board dismissed allegations by the state of Utah that the Skull Valley site would be unsafe because of overflights by F-16s from Hill Air Force Base. This week, NRC Chairman Nils A. Diaz dismissed concerns about terrorist attacks against the PFS site.

Ward speculated that the latest troubles at Yucca Mountain could have been the backdrop of "some of the comments coming out of the NRC" that supported the Utah site. Perhaps NRC officials knew of this study's problem before it was made public, he said.