Funny. Republicans were eager to prosecute Clinton for lying about an affair, but won’t prosecute lying to build a project that could kill people.

Full disclosure on Yucca Mountain

Critics of the Yucca Mountain Project have long maintained that the federal government will do anything to keep its heavy equipment humming northwest of Las Vegas.

As research has uncovered flaws in designs of the planned nuclear waste repository, the Department of Energy has spared no expense in attempting to remedy them, insisting each fix would be good enough to meet arbitrary health and radiation standards. Over the years, even as congressional audits exposed shoddy management, wasted resources and questionable science, the federal government has stuck to its assumptions that nuclear waste is best kept inside a mountain, and that Southern Nevada has the only mountain suitable for the repository.

But last year’s disclosure that U.S. Geological Survey employees might have fabricated and falsified data to satisfy quality assurance bureaucrats took the project’s reputation to a new low. E-mail messages sent by government hydrologists between 1998 and 2000 suggested they made up dates, deleted some information and submitted official documents with data that did not match their own records related to water infiltration at the repository.

The allegation that well-paid federal scientists and contractors were using bogus information to prop up a project that already has cost billions of dollars hinted at a massive fraud against taxpayers. Congressional hearings and an inquiry by the Energy Department’s inspector general followed. In December, the inspector general finished its investigation and forwarded its findings to the U.S. attorney’s office in Nevada.

On Tuesday, Energy Department Inspector General Gregory Friedman announced that the e-mails “did not meet the level of criminality,” and that the U.S. attorney’s office “could not show intent” to commit crimes. As a result, no criminal charges would be pursued.

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Oh, yeah. Almost forgot. Don’t think this will affect you? The government wants to build more Yucca Mountain-like facilities elsewhere starting with Utah. And as for what’s happening in England.

Here’s an interesting article on a very Republican site about how screwed up the whole process of dealing with nuke waste is.