Affidavit Dated February 4, 2002

· DOE’s site characterization data shows that rates of water infiltration into the mountain are on the order of 100 times higher than had been expected.

· DOE retroactively changed the rules for site suitability in December 2001 after it had become apparent that the original rules could not be met for Yucca Mountain.

· Because the Yucca Mountain site cannot be shown to be capable of long-term geologic isolation of high-level nuclear waste during the regulatory period, DOE adopted new rules that permit the agency to rely entirely on man-made waste packages.

· The project has become simply an array of engineered waste packages that happen to be located 1000 feet underground.

· Through the 1980s and early 1990s, neither DOE nor Congress ever anticipated that engineered barriers would play a primary role in isolating nuclear waste.

· Even the best technology imaginable could never isolate waste for the roughly quarter-of-a-million years it would take for the longest-lived radioisotopes in spent fuel to decay to safe levels.

· DOE has now placed its focus entirely on meeting licensing requirements, and has abandoned its obligation to independently assess the suitability of the site itself.

· Congress made it clear that DOE was to determine the suitability of the site, while the NRC was to determine the licensability of the repository system. DOE has abandoned this concept.