Tuesday, June 3, 2003 | 10:58 a.m.
Lawyers preparing to fight the Yucca Mountain project will have to settle for an edited set of documents from the Energy Department, a result of the federal Homeland Security Act.
Millions of pages of documents chronicling the research and development of the proposed nuclear dump will be run through a new computer program designed by University of Nevada, Las Vegas computer scientists to sift out potentially sensitive information.
While the long-range application of the program holds great promise for government agencies intent on keeping certain facts out of the hands of terrorists, some say the redaction of passages from unclassified documents could serve to hide pertinent facts and at the very least slow down the process of accessing records.
"As lawyers we are always concerned about the flow of information," said Joe Egan, Nevada's lead attorney for the Yucca Mountain licensing procedure. "These types of things can be used to shield documents that would otherwise be available to the public."
But Egan adds that he is not too worried about obtaining the documents he needs because the Energy Department will allow any U.S. citizen on a "need to know basis" to gain access to deleted passages if they make a request in writing.
Egan said it could slow the process down, though.
It is estimated the Energy Department has generated 41 million pages of documentation on Yucca Mountain -- or approximately 3 1/2 million documents. Egan's office, on the other hand, has only received 12,000 documents, with mountains more to come as the proceeding before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission nears. Lawyers will try to block the Energy Department from obtaining a license to operate the Yucca Mountain facility and some of those documents will play a crucial role in helping them prepare their case.
With the passage of President Bush's Homeland Security Act in November 2002, Energy Department officials knew all of that documentation needed to be reviewed before it was released.
UNLV computer scientists had already developed a system that would scan government e-mails for sensitive information and Energy Department officials asked them to change the direction of their research and concentrate on finding a way to sift through millions of pages on Yucca Mountain.
"After 9-11, they wanted to know if this same system could be trained for Homeland Security," said Kazem Taghva, a professor of computer science at UNLV who headed up the project. "If you look at these documents they could provide information that could lead to terrorist activity."
About 10 computer scientists were placed on the project and trained by the Energy Department to review sensitive material.
Researchers began to map out specific areas that might be used against the U.S. such as specific transportation routes, what kind of blast load the structure could withstand, or even what sort of materials something was reinforced with.
"There's information about how a plane could run into a cask and how it could cause radioactive leaks," said Julie Borsack, a computer scientist who helped design the program. "The notion was that this information could be dangerous."
With three years and $4 million of Energy Department funding, UNLV developed a program that they claim is nearly foolproof.
"Based on the initial testing, there has been no error," Taghva said. "Is it possible that it might let something through? Yes, but not probable."
The program is designed to scan all unclassified material for any key words, phrases, names or scenarios. The passage is then highlighted and manual reviewers make the final decision on whether to redact the sentence. All of that material then gets posted on the Energy Department's website for public access.
"If the DOE had to pay individuals to screen all of this information for trial, I'm not sure the federal government has ever printed enough money to pay for that," said Thomas Nartker, UNLV's dean of computer science.
While the issue of the safety of storing nuclear waste 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas will be of crucial importance during the licensing stage of the project, Energy Department representatives maintain the new program is not an effort to hide anything, but a simpler way to comply with homeland security requirements.
"It's not going to be less information," said Allen Benson, director of public affairs for the Yucca Mountain project. "It is to make sure that sensitive information in light of 9/11 is not inadvertently given out."
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