Lawyer Who Fought Nuclear Waste Had Unusual Last Request
A lawyer who died at the age of 53 after a campaign to ban a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain had an unusual request in the obituary he wrote for himself.
Joseph Egan wrote in the obit, posted on his firm’s website, that he had arranged for his ashes to be spread at Yucca Mountain with the eulogy “radwaste buried here only over my dead body,” the New York Times reports. Egan’s wife, Patricia, told the newspaper that she would comply with the request.
Egan was the lead counsel for the state of Nevada in opposing the nuclear waste repository. The obit says Egan supported nuclear energy but opposed the Yucca Mountain site because it was porous and would leak radioactive contamination. The fate of the project is still unclear.
Egan was a partner at Shaw Pittman before he founded a firm dedicated to nuclear nonproliferation. He died of gastroesophageal cancer.
