Energy Dept. will use in-house attorneys to handle legal work

Benjamin Grove

Wednesday, July 10, 2002 | 11:08 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Faced with the complex task of applying for a license to dump nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, the Energy Department is relying solely on its own lawyers to oversee the sophisticated legal work involved.

For now, the department is not announcing any plans to hire an outside law firm to help shepherd the DOE through the licensing process, Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis said.

"If we have any intention of retaining another firm, then we will announce it," Davis said.

The department plans to apply for the license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by a target date of 2004, Davis said. For now, the Energy Department is on schedule using in-house lawyers, Davis said.

The department had relied on the Chicago-based law firm of Winston & Strawn to assemble the license, until the firm resigned amid controversy in December 2001. But that loss has not slowed the department's plans to apply for a license within two years, Davis said.

Winston & Strawn had a $16.5 million contract with the Energy Department. A team of the firm's Washington-based lawyers was working on the project.

But the firm quit two years into the job in December 2001 after the Sun reported that the firm had also been paid by the Nuclear Energy Institute, a nuclear industry trade group, to lobby in favor of Yucca Mountain.

That presented a conflict of interest, Nevada officials said. They argued that the firm was working for the Energy Department, which at the time -- before the Department formally recommended the Yucca site to President Bush -- was supposed to be an impartial project manager. It was improper for the department to hire a firm that was closely tied to the pro-Yucca nuclear industry, they said.

Winston & Strawn strongly denied any wrong-doing, and said there had never been a conflict of interest. The firm quit after an Energy Department inspector general's investigation because the controversy had become a distraction to the department's work, firm officials said.

The inspector general found that Winston & Strawn had not revealed its relationship with NEI before the Energy Department hired the firm.