By JAMES GLANZ A federal judge has temporarily barred backers of an Energy Department laser project from citing an expert panel's evaluation, a decision suggesting that the panel may have been improperly stacked with people who have a stake in the project. Congress saved the project last year, when it was nearly $1 billion over budget and years behind schedule, after a panel of technical experts found that many technical and managerial problems had been corrected. The project's budget for the current fiscal year was nearly tripled to $199 million. But on Wednesday, Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, issued a preliminary injunction barring the Energy Department, which operates the project at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Northern California, from offering the panel's report in continuing lobbying efforts before Congress. The department says the laser project, called the National Ignition Facility, will help ensure the reliability of the nation's nuclear stockpile without actual nuclear tests, by simulating conditions close to those in bombs. Opponents say the project was built only to give Livermore weapons scientists a mission after the end of the cold war. The suit was filed by the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington and a local organization critical of the laboratory. It charges, in effect, that the department filled the panel with scientists who had a financial and professional stake in the laser, in violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act. "This court injunction suggests that D.O.E.'s review is not independent and is not even legal," said Senator Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat who opposes the project, referring to the Department of Energy. "We should not continue to pour money into N.I.F. without a rigorous, independent review." Darwin Morgan, a spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Agency, a semiautonomous agency within the department that handles the project, denied that panel members had conflicts of interest. "The merits of the case have not been decided yet," Mr. Morgan said. But Dr. Thomas B. Cochran, director of the nuclear program at the defense council, which brought the suit, said the injunction could be significant, since Congress withheld $69 million of the 2001 money until the Energy Department could certify, sometime after this March 31, that the project's revised schedule and cost estimates were sound and that it could meet its technical goals. The injunction, which also covers a second review panel formed this year, means that the findings may not be offered in support of the project during the certification and indicates that Judge Sullivan believes that the plaintiffs in the suit are likely to prevail. But Judge Sullivan also ruled that if Congress decided to request the reports, they could be sent with a disclaimer saying that they might be in violation of the statute. Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company