Trump administration proposes $230M cut for Hanford
Mon., Feb. 12, 2018
SPOKANE, Wash. – The Trump administration is proposing a $230 million cut in cleanup spending at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in fiscal 2019.
The budget request released on Monday cuts $61 million from the budget for Hanford’s Office of River Protection, and $169 million from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Richland Operations Office.
The two offices would receive about $2.1 billion combined for the fiscal year.
Hanford for decades made plutonium for nuclear weapons. The site near Richland is now engaged in cleaning up a huge volume of radioactive and hazardous wastes left over from plutonium production.
Critics have said Hanford’s budget must be dramatically increased to some $3 billion a year to achieve legal cleanup milestones.
Nationwide, the budget calls for spending $6.6 billion on environmental cleanup of Cold War wastes.
Local journalism is essential.
Give directly to The Spokesman-Review's Northwest Passages community forums series -- which helps to offset the costs of several reporter and editor positions at the newspaper -- by using the easy options below. Gifts processed in this system are not tax deductible, but are predominately used to help meet the local financial requirements needed to receive national matching-grant funds.
Subscribe to the Coronavirus newsletter
Get the day’s latest Coronavirus news delivered to your inbox by subscribing to our newsletter.