Yucca Mountain e-mail author denies allegations
Employee tells lawmakers references to falsified data were misinterpreted.
An author of e-mails that raised suspicions about the validity of scientific support for the nation's first nuclear waste dump said under oath Wednesday that the research is sound.
Testifying under a subpoena from Congress, Joseph Hevesi denied falsifying documentation for computer models used in the late 1990s to predict water flow through Yucca Mountain, the Nevada ridge where Energy Department wants to bury 77,000 tons of spent fuel rods and other radioactive materials.
The U.S. Geological Survey hydrologist said messages he wrote about Energy's quality assurance process for the research have been misinterpreted to suggest that data were faked.
"The work was sound," Hevesi told members the House Government Reform Subcommittee on the Federal Workforce and Agency Organization. He was ordered to appear in Washington after refusing to discuss the matter privately with subcommittee staff.
The controversy focuses on e-mails sent by Hevesi and two other federal employees between 1998 and 2000. The messages were uncovered by contractors preparing a license application for the dump late last year and were made public in March.
In a two-hour hearing Wednesday, subcommittee chairman Jon Porter, R-Nev., read excerpts from several e-mails and asked Hevesi to provide context.
One message, dated March 20, 2000, discussed the installation of software being used in the Yucca evaluation. "I've made up the dates and names," Hevesi wrote. "This is as good as it's going to get. If they need more proof, I will be happy to make up more stuff."
It was an "off the cuff" response to a request for quality assurance documents on software that was not essential to the modeling process, Hevesi said Thursday, apologizing for his poor choice of words. "I had a reputation for being flippant in my e-mails," he said.
All the messages portray a worker who was frustrated about tight schedules, limited resources and evolving quality assurance procedures and who tended to vent his frustrations in writing. Hevesi said the controversy has taught him a lesson. "I have completely rethought how I use the whole e-mail system and how I communicate."
In separate testimony, an Energy Department official noted that the e-mails in question amount to a handful among millions. W. John Arthur, deputy director of the agency's Nevada-based Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, said most quality assurance issues discussed in the e-mails were documented and corrected in mid-2000.
Arthur said that although the e-mails did not suggest that any scientific measurement was falsified, the Energy Department is re-examining the data for accuracy. "Because our quality assurance requirements were not met," he said, "no matter how good Mr. Hevesi's work products and modeling may be, these products cannot be trusted today."
The congressional inquiry continues in parallel with criminal investigations by the FBI and inspectors general of the Energy and Interior departments.