WASHINGTON -- The Department of Energy is preparing to make public more than 2 million Yucca Mountain documents, a government attorney said Monday in defusing at least one fight with Nevada over the nuclear waste site.

When the documents are added to what has been posted to an electronic database, the department will have shared more than 3.3 million documents totaling 30 million pages, attorney Michael Shebelskie said at a Nuclear Regulatory Commission hearing.

The documents will be made available within 60 days, Shebelskie told a panel of three NRC administrative judges.

"We will have completed our review of those documents, and in the interest of making public disclosure sooner rather than later, we made that decision," Shebelskie said after the hearing.

Nevada officials and attorneys said that another reason might exist: to head off yet another lawsuit the state was building against the Yucca project.

"I don't think they are doing this because they are nice guys," said Bob Loux, director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects. "DOE began to believe we would have a claim."

The documents include science and engineering studies that the department plans to cite in its bid for an NRC license to store highly radioactive waste within the mountain ridge, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The documents have been formatted and loaded for the Yucca database, which is managed by the NRC technicians. Administrator Dan Graser said that once the department gives the OK, the documents could be posted in "less than an hour."

In November, then-Gov. Kenny Guinn charged that the agency was hoarding millions of documents, hiding them from Nevada consultants who would sift through them for flaws and ammunition against the Yucca effort.

Federal rules allow the agency to wait until the database is officially certified before making the documents available, which might not be until the end of 2007.

But Loux said the state was building a case that by waiting that long even if the documents were ready, the agency was depriving the state, Nevada counties, environmental groups and other parties of the right to examine them fully.

"As a result, we may have a claim in court that we were denied due process," Loux said.

Department spokesman Craig Stevens said Ward Sproat, Yucca project director, "committed last year to releasing documents in advance of certification."

Stevens said, "This early release is a result of that commitment.".

A team of Nevada attorneys was prepared to set the groundwork for a lawsuit at the NRC hearing on Monday. But they were blunted when Shebelskie announced the department was going to make the documents public within 60 days.