Adams Natural Resources Consulting Services of Carson City, Nev., will aid Nevada’s legal efforts to oppose the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear-waste repository for another year, under a contract modification approved Wednesday.
Nevada Attorney General Adam Paul Laxalt, Gov. Brian Sandoval (R) and Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske approved the extension during a state Board of Examiners meeting. The extension raises the total value of the deal by $150,000 to $300,000 and extends the period of performance through Sept. 30, 2018. The state awarded the contract on Oct. 1, 2015, according to a copy of the amended agreement provided to Weapons Complex Monitor.
Adams Natural Resources Consulting Services is managed by Marta Adams, who earlier in 2015 retired as Nevada’s chief deputy attorney general. Prior to her retirement, the local Las Vegas Review Journal newspaper called Adams Nevada’s “chief in-house lawyer on Yucca Mountain.”
Adams has a similar role under the just-extended contract, which requires her to “appear in designated Yucca Mountain litigation as a Special Deputy Attorney General, attend meetings, conferences, and hearings related to such litigation.”
Nevada has rigidly opposed the Yucca Mountain project since Congress in 1987 designated the site as the sole permanent disposal facility for spent nuclear fuel from U.S. power plants and other high-level radioactive waste.
Draft spending legislation approved by a House subcommittee last week would provide a total of $150 million to the Energy Department and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to help restart DOE’s application to license Yucca as a nuclear-waste disposal site in the government’s 2018 fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1.
The spending bill must still be approved by the full House Appropriations Committee, then the full House, then the Senate before President Donald Trump — who requested funding for the Yucca restart — could sign it.
Nevada’s entire congressional delegation opposes storing nuclear waste at Yucca, but the project enjoys strong support in the House. Last week, the House Energy and Commerce Committee advanced to the floor a bill, separate from the proposed budget legislation, that would smooth the way for the federal government to start building a waste repository at Yucca.
Yucca even has some support in the Senate, despite strong opposition from Sens. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) and Maria Cortez-Masto (D-Nev.).
