Federal agencies finally agree on Hanford cleanup timetable

YAKIMA — The Environmental Protection Agency and the Energy Department have reached a tentative agreement on new deadlines for cleaning up pools of spent nuclear fuel at the Hanford nuclear reservation.

The EPA had set a May 1 deadline for the Energy Department to come up with a new plan for removing radioactive sludge in the K East and West basins, or face fines of up to $500,000. The indoor, leak-prone pools of water about 400 yards from the Columbia River once held 2,300 tons of spent nuclear fuel. About 85 percent of the fuel has been removed.

Once the fuel is removed, what remains is sludge from corroded fuel rods stored in the huge water-filled basin, along with dust and dirt and sloughed material from the basin walls.

The Energy Department missed a legal deadline established under the 1989 Tri-Party Agreement — the legal pact governing cleanup at Hanford — to begin removing the sludge by Dec. 31, 2002. EPA fined the agency $76,000 last year.

The new agreement will require a review by the state Department of Ecology and the public before it becomes final.

"It’s unfortunate that we’re so far behind on getting started on the sludge, but it’s a positive that we’re finally getting started," EPA spokesman Nick Ceto said Friday. "We can’t go back in time and meet the deadlines they already missed, so our goal was to get an overall strategy for dealing with the sludge that was better than before."

The previous plan called for removal of all fuel, debris and water, as well as both basins, by the end of July 2007.

Copyright ©2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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