Panel obtains nuclear papers

WASHINGTON – The Energy Department on Friday turned over more than 1,600 pages of subpoenaed documents to a congressional panel investigating possible paperwork fraud on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump in Nevada.

However, the subcommittee chairman heading the investigation, Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., said that some of the documents he demanded were missing.

“There’s not a reason addressed, and we will find out and we’ll move forward, and if they choose to not be in full compliance we then have available to us to move forward with a contempt of Congress” action, Porter said.

Energy Department spokesman Craig Stevens said Porter’s request involved thousands of documents and the department was as responsive as possible in the two days it was given.

“It is only natural that it would take more time to assemble additional documents in light of the scope of his request,” Stevens said. “Any additional existing documents that would be responsive to his request will be produced.”

Porter’s panel, a subcommittee of the House Government Reform Committee, is investigating e-mails written between 1998 and 2000 by government scientists suggesting they made up details of their work and kept two sets of books, one for themselves and one to satisfy quality-assurance officials.

Much of the information was turned over Friday, but one piece was not – the Energy Department’s draft of the license application it must submit to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in order to build the dump. Nevada officials have long sought that document.