‘Record funding’ for WA nuclear cleanup passes House. Wins for other projects

The Congressional bill package that includes the fiscal 2026 spending plan for the Hanford nuclear site would increase its budget to a record level.

It would boost money for Hanford by $277 million from the fiscal 2025 budget bill, for a $3.2 billion budget.

That’s an increase of almost 9.4%, according to the staff of Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.

The House passed the bill Wednesday in a bipartisan vote, with Reps. Dan Newhouse and Michael Baumgartner of Washington state joining their fellow Republicans in support.

The “minibus” spending package included Energy and Water Development, Interior and Environment, and Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriations acts for the fiscal year that began in October.

The package now goes to the Senate for a vote.

In August, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., visited the Tri-Cities and promised to fight for Hanford and LIGO Hanford observatory funding, and she delivered on those commitments, said David Reeploeg, vice president for federal programs at the Tri-City Development Council.

“We sincerely appreciate her understanding of how critical these investments are to our community, and her proven ability to get results,” he said.

Her leadership as vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, along with work by Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash, and Newhouse, was instrumental in achieving the funding levels for project important to the Tri-Cities in the package, he said.

“I’ll say it again and again — we cannot cut corners when it comes to cleaning up the biggest nuclear waste site in the country,” Murray said in a statement.

Murray said that “these were tough negotiations under challenging funding circumstances, but I made clear at every point that shortchanging Hanford was not an option, and ultimately, I was able to write a bill that delivers record funding for the Hanford cleanup.”

“Every time this administration tries to sabotage Hanford, I’ll get right in front of them and put a stop to it,” she said.

The House had initially proposed cutting Hanford funding in fiscal 2026 to just under $2.9 billion, below the Trump administration’s request for just over $2.9 billion.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., used her powerful positions in the Senate Appropriations Committee and as ranking member of the Energy and Water Subcommittee to get the final version of the bill to $3.2 billion.

The Hanford nuclear site in Eastern Washington adjacent to Richland is undergoing environmental cleanup after extensive contamination and stored radioactive waste after producing nearly two-thirds of the plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program from World War II through the Cold War. Hanford budget specifics

The fiscal 2026 spending plan includes close to $2.2 billion for the Hanford Office of River Protection, which is responsible for 56 million gallons of radioactive waste held in underground tanks, many of them prone to leaking, and work to treat the waste for disposal.

The Hanford vitrification plant, where construction started in 2002, began operating in late 2025 to glassify the waste for disposal.

The Office of River Protection budget included in the minibus package falls between the Senate proposal of just over $2.4 billion and the House proposal of just over $2 billion.

It includes nearly $612 million for the Hanford vitrification plant’s High Level Waste Facility, which is required to start treating high level radioactive waste by 2033. The waste is now part of the 56 million gallons stored in underground tanks, some for as long as eight decades.

It also includes $480 million to accelerate the work that started in recent months to prepare and glassify low activity radioactive waste from the tanks. The money will speed up both emptying waste from leak-prone underground tanks and getting the waste treated for permanent disposal.

The Hanford Richland Operations Office, which includes other environmental cleanup work at Hanford and maintaining and running the 580-square-mile site, would have a fiscal ‘26 budget of just over $1 billion, under the package. That’s more than either the initial House or Senate bill.

The bill includes money for continued work to expand the Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility, a lined landfill in central Hanford and work to prepare to start shipping Hanford’s transuranic waste — typically debris contaminated with plutonium — to a national repository for certain nuclear weapons projects, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.

The Trump administration had proposed major cuts in the Richland Operations Office budget. LIGO at Hanford site

The bill also includes some other wins for science and science history projects in the Tri-Cities area.

The Trump administration had proposed cutting National Science Foundation funding by 40% for the nation’s two Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatories — LIGO Hanford, which is about 10 miles from Richland on unused Hanford nuclear site land, and its twin, LIGO Livingston in Louisiana.

The minibus bill retains Senate language the directs funding to remain level for the LIGO program at $49 million.

The two cutting-edge observatories work together to detect ripples in space and time, or gravitational waves, passing through the Earth from cataclysmic events in space. The information helps researchers better understand forces that shaped the universe, possibly rewriting our understanding of physics. Hanford national park

The final bill also includes language from the Senate bill providing $5 million for preserving historical Hanford nuclear site structures as part of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park.

The Department of Energy, in coordination with the National Park Service, would be required to provide an updated list of priorities for preservation projects within 90 days of the bill being signed.

Now the focus at the Hanford portion of the national park, is repairing B Reactor, the world’s first full-scale nuclear reactor. It produced the plutonium for the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, helping end World War II and ushering in the atomic age.

A contract has been awarded to replace the roof after leaks were detected and to replace mortar between the reactor’s exterior concrete masonry blocks.

Construction on those projects is expected to begin in the spring, with the reactor expected to reopen for public tours in summer 2027.