Nevada on Tuesday extended a contract with a Texas-based law firm to continue fighting the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository for another six months at a cost of roughly $1 million.
Extending the contract of Egan, Fitzpatrick, Malsch & Lawrence, which also has an office in Washington, D.C., was one of many business items considered by the Nevada Board of Examiners in Carson City. The deal, awarded in 2013 and originally worth about $5 million, now runs through March 30 and has a total value of roughly $8.5 million.
Under the deal, the firm “provides ongoing outside counsel to assist with the Yucca Mountain litigation and to represent the state before the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on issues related to the proposed Yucca Mountain high-level radioactive repository program,” according to the agenda for Tuesday’s meeting.
Funding for the contract comes from the Nevada Attorney General’s Office, which itself is funded through a biennial appropriation from the state legislature. In the last state budget, approved in June, the legislature approved more than $7 million to fight Yucca Mountain over the next two years, including $3.8 million for the state’s Agency for Nuclear Projects and about $3.4 million for the Nevada Attorney General’s Office.
The Donald Trump administration wants to restart the Energy Department’s application to license Yucca Mountain in Nye County, Nev., as a permanent disposal facility for nuclear waste. The White House requested $150 million for the effort in fiscal 2018: $120 million for DOE and $30 million for the NRC, which has sole power to approve the license application.
House appropriators essentially approved the Yucca restart, but Senate appropriators did not. The three-month stopgap spending bill approved last week delayed the final showdown over Yucca funding in 2018 to Dec. 8.
There is widespread, though not unanimous, opposition to the project in Nevada, including from the state’s governor, attorney general, and almost its entire congressional delegation in Washington.
