Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., is questioning why the Biden administration has proposed a Hanford site budget that would delay cleanup of high-level radioactive waste spilled into the ground close to Richland and near the Columbia River.
She raised the issue when Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm appeared before the Senate Appropriations Energy and Water Subcommittee to defend the administration's fiscal 2023 spending request for the Department of Energy.
The proposed budget would cut $172 million from the $2.6 billion nuclear reservation budget. And Murray asked Granholm what the Biden administration was thinking when it came up with that proposal.
The Department of Energy's own estimates in its most recent Hanford "lifecycle" cost and schedule report show that $262 million is needed in fiscal 2023 to meet legal obligations under the Tri-Party Agreement just in cleanup along the Columbia River at Hanford, Murray said.
"But your FY'23 budget only requests $135 million for this account," Murray said. "Do you believe that request is adequate?"
Granholm agreed that legal commitments need to be funded.
But, she said, proposing a budget is a matter of balancing spending on Department of Energy environmental cleanup projects across the nation.
"Well, I assure you at the site, it's not just numbers. It's about an incredibly important site in this country and we have a requirement to make sure we clean that up," Murray snapped back.
The Hanford 324 Building, which sits above the spill of high-level radioactive waste, will remain safeguarded and maintained for another year when work there can be included in the annual budget, Granholm said.
"We are not blind to how important it is to address it," she said.
GAO on Hanford vit plant
Murray brought up a second example of inadequate funding at Hanford — work toward preparing the $17 billion Hanford vitrification plant to start treating high level radioactive tank waste in underground tanks to allow for its permanent disposal.
Some of the waste has been stored since the 1940s in tanks prone to leaking.
The 580-square-mile Hanford site in Eastern Washington was used to produce nearly two-thirds of the nation's plutonium from World War II through the Cold War, leaving 56 million gallons of radioactive waste, plus contaminated buildings, soil and groundwater.
The Wednesday appropriations hearing came the same day that the Government Accountability Office released a status report to Congress on major DOE environmental cleanup projects, including at Hanford.
Work stopped on the vitrification plant's facility to treat high level radioactive waste after technical issues were raised about the safe and effective operation of the facility in 2012. Only minimal "sustainment work" and some design work is being done on that facility as of the start of this fiscal year, the GAO report said.
DOE has been working on an analysis of alternatives for handling high level waste at the plant since April 2019. The GAO report said finishing the report has been moved from September 2021 to mid 2022.
Balancing site budgets
DOE is concentrating now on a court deadline to start treating low activity waste at the vitrification plant by the end of 2023.
Construction is planned to resume at the vit plant's High Level Waste Facility in fiscal 2023 to have the vitrification plant fully operational by a consent decree deadline of 2036 set by a federal court.
Murray asked Granholm if the proposed fiscal 2023 budget will support DOE's planned work at the plant's High Level Waste Facility as costs are expected to double between fiscal 2023 and 2024 and to continue to grow through the rest of the decade.
Granholm responded again that the proposed budget is good, but there are "different equities and points of view."
"Explain to us why the department proposes major increases for nuclear weapons and naval reactors but cuts clean-up sites like Hanford?" asked Murray.
Hanford is the nation's largest environmental cleanup site, Granholm acknowledged, but said there are other sites across the nation that also need environmental cleanup and the budget request has to balance needs at all sites.
"I am really disappointed by this year's request," Murray said. "We've got to do better than this."
GAO on Hanford projects
The GAO report released Wednesday looked at two Hanford projects in addition to the vitrification plant.
The report said starting up the $164 million Tank-Side Cesium Removal System, or TSCR, was a "significant achievement."
The system is preparing low activity radioactive tank waste to be turned into a stable glass form at the vitrification plant.
But the GAO report pointed out that costs for the demolition of the Plutonium Finishing Plant at Hanford rose dramatically.
At $209 million at the end of December, it was $136 million over the cost anticipated in September 2015, the report said.
Work on demolition of the massive and highly radioactively contaminated plant is basically complete, the GAO report said, but the project has faced significant challenges.
That included an extensive spread of airborne radioactive particles in December 2017, with 42 workers inhaling or ingesting small amounts of radioactive contamination from demolition of the plant.
