Hanford cleanup faces cuts

Congress is slashing more than $100 million from the budget for a plant to clean up the most dangerous radioactive waste at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, a move that threatens deadlines for cleaning up the mess, Sen. Patty Murray said Wednesday.

Negotiators for the House and Senate have decided the $626 million requested by the Bush administration to continue construction of the vitrification plant is too much, especially as the nation faces costs of Hurricane Katrina and other problems, the Washington state Democrat said.

The cuts will cause a yearlong delay in construction and lead to layoffs at the nuclear reservation, Murray said.

“It means it will cost more in the future, more people will be laid off and the whole project will be in jeopardy,” Murray said by telephone Wednesday evening.

Hanford supporters will have a last chance to try to restore the money Thursday, before the conference committee on Energy and Water approves the budget, Murray said.

She blamed the U.S. Department of Energy, which operates Hanford, for failing to strongly defend its budget needs.

“The department is committed to our cleanup obligations at Hanford and views the waste-treatment plant as a critical part of our overall strategy,” said Mike Waldron, a spokesman for Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman in Washington, D.C. “The department has been fully engaged with the Congress and has vigorously advocated for both the project and the need to fully fund the president’s budget request of $626 million.”

The vitrification plant is the U.S. government’s largest construction project. It has been plagued with construction woes for years and is only about 30 percent completed.

The plant is designed to convert decades-old radioactive waste from Cold War production of nuclear weapons into glasslike logs for permanent disposal in a nuclear waste repository.

The waste, about 53 million gallons, is stewing in 177 aging underground tanks at Hanford. Some of the tanks have leaked and threaten the Columbia River less than 10 miles away. Many tanks have outlived their design life, which makes retrieval of the waste a top priority.

The one-of-a-kind plant is massive: Once completed it will stand 12 stories tall and be the size of four football fields. It has a budget of $5.8 billion and rising.

Murray said that the Senate approved the Bush administration’s $626 million budget request for fiscal 2006, and the House even added money. But the Energy Department did not aggressively lobby for the money in the conference committee, which is the final step before budgets are sent to the president, Murray complained.

She said she spoke with Bodman and urged him to protect the vit plant’s budget.

“This is not a little Washington state project,” Murray said. “This is a national project with national significance.”

The nation cannot leave the highly radioactive wastes where they are, she said.

Any delays mean the Energy Department will not be able to meet legal deadlines in agreements with federal and state regulators, Murray said.