No Charges in Falsified Nuclear Waste Data
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: April 26, 2006
WASHINGTON, April 25 — The United States attorney for Nevada has decided not to prosecute federal employees who admitted making up details about research involving the Energy Department's effort to open a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, the department's inspector general said Tuesday.
But the inspector general, Gregory H. Friedman, said the Yucca project had "internal control deficiencies" that allowed lapses that contributed to a loss of public confidence.
Mr. Friedman's findings were part of a report about e-mail messages sent by employees of the United States Geologic Survey who said they had made up details about their research about the mountain's geology.
After an examination of the e-mail messages, which were written from 1998 to 2000, "We could not find a satisfactory explanation as to why the e-mails had not been recognized as problematic years earlier," he said.
The department still has not made its research materials public, and has been unable to apply for a license for the project, which was supposed to begin burying waste in 1998....
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/26/washington/26yucca.html