Bush budget boosts cash for Hanford
YAKIMA – The Bush administration Monday proposed boosting funding slightly next year for ongoing efforts to clean up the highly contaminated Hanford Nuclear Reservation.
Included in the proposal was more money to continue construction of a waste treatment plant that has been plagued by skyrocketing costs and delays.
Officials in Washington state offered restrained approval of the budget proposal, pleased that the administration restored spending for the plant but concerned that money may have been unnecessarily steered away from other cleanup projects at the south-central Washington site.
The federal government created Hanford in the 1940s as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb. Today, it is the nation’s most contaminated nuclear site, with cleanup costs expected to total $50 billion to $60 billion.
Under the administration’s proposed budget for fiscal 2007, more than $1.8 billion would be spent on Hanford cleanup – an increase of about $117 million over what will be spent in fiscal 2006 but below the roughly $2 billion budget for 2005.
The proposal restores money for the so-called vitrification plant to 2005 levels at $690 million. The plant will convert millions of gallons of radioactive waste to a stable glass form for permanent disposal in a nuclear waste repository.
In 2006, the Bush administration’s budget slashed plant spending to $626 million after a new report showed the U.S. Department of Energy had underestimated the impact a severe earthquake might have on the plant. Congress later cut the plant’s budget further, to $526 million, over stringent objections by Gov. Chris Gregoire and the state’s congressional delegation.
The 2007 budget reflects the federal government’s continued commitment to cleaning up Hanford and to completing the waste treatment plant, Energy Department spokesman Mike Waldron said Monday.
“Our commitment to the waste treatment plant is not purely rhetorical, but practical and real. We’re putting our money where our mouth is,” Waldron said. “We anticipate that we will have resolved all of the technical issues that need to be resolved and will be able to go forward with an aggressive schedule.”
The Energy Department slowed construction on the plant significantly last fall amid a new review of the costs and schedule. That review by the Army Corps of Engineers is expected later this year.
Gregoire had threatened to sue the federal government if funding for the waste treatment plant was not restored. State officials were still reviewing details of the budget proposal Monday.
Jay Manning, director of the state Department of Ecology, said the proposed 2007 budget for the plant was a positive step.
“But we have grave concerns about the president’s proposal for a substantial reduction in funding for other aspects of the Hanford cleanup, including the important work that is currently under way to remove radioactive waste from the underground tanks,” Manning said.
The proposed budget reduces the amount of money for tank waste retrieval by about $52 million. Retrieving toxic and radioactive waste from 177 underground tanks is considered a crucial project because many of the tanks have leaked into the aquifer, threatening the Columbia River less than 10 miles away.
The budget also reduced spending by about $10.8 million for deactivating and decommissioning the Fast Flux Test Facility, a one-of-a-kind reactor built to test advanced nuclear fuels.
Decommissioning the facility was not considered an immediate cleanup priority, Waldron said. In addition, the schedule for emptying tanks was altered to realistically reflect when the waste treatment plant will be available to convert that tank waste into glass.
U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings, a Washington Republican, also called the overall budget proposal “a relief” but questioned proposed spending for other Hanford cleanup projects.