Memo hints at feds faltering on Hanford cleanup

Associated Press

YAKIMA — A U.S. Department of Energy memorandum on the treatment of radioactive waste has raised questions again about the federal government’s commitment to cleaning up the Hanford nuclear reservation.

"I think the jury’s still out on this one," Sheryl Hutchison, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Ecology, which is one of Hanford’s regulators, said Tuesday.

The Nov. 19 memo from Energy Department cleanup chief Jessie Roberson to the agency’s budget officer was distributed last week at a meeting of the Hanford Advisory Board in Portland, Ore.

In it, Roberson recommends eliminating plans to turn into glass — or vitrify — at least 75 percent of the high-level radioactive waste currently scheduled for vitrification at Department of Energy complexes.

It goes on to suggest that at least two "proven, cost-effective" solutions be developed for treating high-level radioactive waste.

But it’s not clear exactly what that would mean at Hanford, where the Department of Energy is scheduled to begin construction next year on a huge complex to turn radioactive waste into glass cylinders for permanent storage.

Energy Department spokesman Tom Welch in Washington, D.C., said he could not immediately provide answers to a list of written questions submitted by The Associated Press on Tuesday because Roberson was out of the office and had to approve the responses.

Plans and deadlines for cleaning up 25 percent of radioactivity in the 53 million gallons of radioactive waste stored in underground tanks at Hanford already have been negotiated, Hutchison said. But the idea of having the 177 tanks emptied and all the waste vitrified by 2028 is still to be negotiated, she said.

"So we’re looking at this memo with a lot of questions. It could be DOE is starting the planning process on the other 75 percent of waste. It might be a good thing, or it’s a start of the war over that remaining waste," she said.

Nationally, the Department of Energy wants to cut $100 billion and 30 years from current estimates that it would take 70 years and $300 billion to clean up the waste at its nuclear sites.

Just last month, President Bush signed a bill that would keep Hanford’s cleanup plans on schedule through next fall. The $1.82 billion for Hanford is an increase from the administration’s original budget proposal of $1.4 billion.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., was "just absolutely livid" last week when she learned the Energy Department might try again to cut funding for Hanford cleanup after she fought all this year to restore the $400 million the administration wanted to cut out of the new budget, said her press secretary, Todd Webster.

"This memo indicates that they are back at it."

Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., said he has been assured by senior Energy Department officials that the administration is committed to seeing Hanford’s vitrification plant built and ready for processing waste by 2007.