Group says nuclear waste missing

Vast quantities of radioactive waste have been lost across the sprawling Hanford Nuclear Reservation since the 1940s, and the U.S. Department of Energy is ignoring the problem, a watchdog group contended Wednesday.

The waste contains enough plutonium to make dozens of nuclear weapons, according to Heart of America Northwest, which is pushing an initiative to ban additional shipments of radioactive wastes to the south-central Washington reservation.

“Enough plutonium to make more than 50 nuclear weapons appears to have been lost and abandoned by U.S. DOE in Hanford’s soil, with no intention of cleaning up the spreading contamination,” said the report authored by Gerald Pollett, director of Heart of America Northwest.

Colleen French, a DOE spokeswoman in Richland, disputed the allegations. She said the Energy Department is well aware of the volume of nuclear waste at Hanford and is making plans to deal with all of it.

It has been widely reported that some of the plutonium made at Hanford during its weapons production days cannot be accounted for. The plutonium, a key ingredient in nuclear weapons, is believed to be inside pipes at the site’s many processing plants, and mixed among the radioactive wastes, French said.

“We know we have plutonium-contaminated wastes,” French said. “That’s why we are cleaning up.”

Heart of America Northwest, based in Seattle, is pushing Initiative 297 on Washington’s November ballot. The measure would require cleanup of existing contamination at Hanford before more waste from other nuclear weapons plants could be brought to the 560-square-mile site near Richland.

Hanford, which contains the nation’s largest volume of radioactive wastes, was created by the Manhattan Project in the 1940s.

Heart of America Northwest contends that under DOE plans, 18 times more transuranic waste would be abandoned on the site than cleaned up. The new report said the Energy Department plans to abandon 152,800 cubic meters of plutonium and transuranic wastes, leaving contamination that could spread to the Columbia River.

Transuranic wastes are contaminated with plutonium and remain radioactive for tens of thousands of years.

But French said Heart of America Northwest is focusing only on DOE’s plan to clean up all the wastes produced since 1970, as required by Congress.