USA Repository Service to Cut 500 Jobs

Contractors for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository are slashing jobs.

The repository is located in a desert on federal land adjacent to the Nevada Test Site in Nye County, Nevada, about 80 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The repository lies within Yucca Mountain, a ridge line in south-central Nevada.

Department of Energy spokesman Allen Benson says the new prime contractor, USA Repository Service, has notified employees that it plans to cut 500 of its roughly 600 contract workers.

Benson says Sandia National Laboratories, another participant in the program, also will be reducing staff.

The Yucca Mountain staff is shrinking in expectation that Congress will cut another $100 million from the controversial, proposed nuclear waste dump 90 miles outside Las Vegas.

Federal officials say the latest round of job cuts will bring the staff to fewer than 900, from a high of about 2,750 three years ago.