State loses Yucca legal expert

There used to be a Nevada cliché associated with the federal government's proposed dump for high level nuclear wastes at Yucca Mountain—“They're going to build it no matter what we do.”

It's not heard so much anymore, given the decades the state has successfully fought the project and the funding for it that President Obama cancelled.

Another indication of its obsolescence is the fact that some of the people who spend careers keeping the dump out of Nevada have retired. The latest is chief deputy Nevada attorney general Marta Adams, who is stepping down at age 64 after spending years on the Yucca issue.

Former attorney general, governor, and U.S. senator Richard Bryan called Adams an “extraordinarily gifted and talented lawyer whose institutional history of the issues involved in blocking the nuclear waste dump is unequaled.”

Bryan said he hopes Adams will consent to serve as an outside consultant to the Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency on the Yucca issue. “She is an invaluable resource,” he said.