LAS VEGAS — Nevada’s federal lawmakers want a congressional investigation of management at Yucca Mountain, after two employees said they were removed for reporting flaws in picking the site to bury the nation’s radioactive waste.

Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and John Ensign, R-Nev., alleged “fraud and abuse” in the firing of Jim Mattimoe and the reassignment of Robert Clark, two quality assurance workers who raised concerns about site selection studies.

“Apparently, these employees were used as an example,” Reid said in a statement released with a letter late Monday to David Walker, head of the congressional General Accounting Office.

“These workers were fired for doing the right thing,” Reid said. “I can’t help but wonder how many other employees have damaging information and are afraid to come forward.”

Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis defended the Yucca Mountain site selection and referred to the next step, a review of the process after the DOE submits a license application in 2005 to the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

“We stand by our science,” Davis said. “We think it’s good and we’re willing to move forward to the NRC.”

Davis said criticism about Yucca Mountain from the Nevada congressional delegation was not new, and said he could not discuss Mattimoe and Clark’s personnel records.

Reid and Ensign cited a Sunday Las Vegas Review-Journal report about Mattimoe’s firing from his contract job as a science and engineering staffer and Clark’s transfer out of his position as Yucca Mountain Project quality assurance manager.

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., also sent a letter asking Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham to make public the concerns that Mattimoe and Clark raised.

Davis said the Energy Department will respond when Abraham gets Berkley’s letter.

Mattimoe and Clark alleged they were removed after expressing concerns to the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management that the project was cutting corners to meet Department of Energy deadlines.

Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., pointed to the workers’ allegations of wrongdoing and corruption as “yet additional evidence that the DOE would do anything to approve Yucca Mountain.”

Over Nevada’s objection, Congress in July approved burying the nation’s most dangerous commercial, industrial and military radioactive waste beneath Yucca Mountain. The site is an ancient volcanic ridge at the western edge of the Nevada Test Site, about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Plans call for the first shipment of 77,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel to arrive in 2010, but a GAO report earlier this year said shipments probably won’t begin until at least 2020.

Ensign said that while a GAO probe probably would not prompt Congress to rescind approval for the Yucca Mountain Project, it would help state lawsuits aimed at killing the project in federal court.

In their letter, Reid and Ensign said Mattimoe and Clark were removed from their Yucca Mountain jobs “because they were aggressive in identifying technical deficiencies in the project.”

Mattimoe filed a wrongful termination complaint, and the federal Labor Department determined he should be reinstated. His former employer, Navarro Research and Engineering, has appealed. Mattimoe now is working at the Los Alamos, N.M., national laboratory.

The two senators also referred to what they said was an anonymous letter indicating what they called “a significant loss” of scientific information stored by the DOE in antiquated storage systems.

“This information is crucial to the accurate modeling of the Yucca Mountain site,” they wrote.

AP-WS-11-26-02 1734EST