In a worst case scenario, environmental cleanup of the Hanford nuclear reservation might not be completed for another 150 years, or possibly never, said Washington Gov. Jay Inslee.
He warned the new director of the Office of Management and Budget at the Biden White House that Hanford site budgets need to be far higher to avoid disaster, meet legal obligations and prevent the nuclear reservation cleanup from continuing until as late as 2178, if not longer.
"As the earliest possible date for cleanup continues to extend farther into the future, the harms to the surrounding communities and the danger of catastrophic impacts to the Pacific Northwest are occurring right now," Inslee, a Democrat, said in a May 23 letter to OMB Director Shalanda Young.
He pointed out that Hanford's 149 single-shell tanks holding radioactive waste underground are between 58 and 78 years old.
That's far beyond the 20 to 30 years they were designed to safely hold waste safe groundwater that moves toward the Columbia River.
At least two of the Hanford tanks are known to be currently leaking radioactive and other hazardous waste into the ground.
Five years ago a tunnel storing highly contaminated equipment partially collapsed and the collapse of a parallel waste storage tunnel was averted at great expense two years later, he said.
"Each year that we delay compliant investment in Hanford Site cleanup, we must spend more to shore up failing infrastructure against immediate calamity," Inslee said.
Hanford site calamity?
"If the idea of investing in the cleanup today is unpalatable, consider this — whether calamity comes in the form of a release of radiation, groundwater contamination reaching the Columbia River, harmful exposures to workers at the site, or something else, the bill will eventually come due," he said. "When it does, those who pay the price will be the tribes, farmers, communities and all of us who rely on the Columbia River ... ."
He is calling for the Biden administration to request $3.76 billion for Hanford spending in fiscal 2024, up from its current request of $2.52 billion for Hanford cleanup in fiscal 2023.
The spending he is calling for in fiscal 2024 is what is needed for the Department of Energy to have a "compliant" budget, one that meets legal obligations, including cleanup deadlines set in the Tri-Party Agreement and a 2010 federal court consent decree. Washington state is a party to both documents.
"As of today, the Hanford site cannot meet the requirements or timelines set forth in these agreements," Inslee said.
In a decades long trend, including the two years of the Biden administration, presidential administrations have proposed budget requests that dramatically underfund cleanup, leaving it to Congress to boost spending levels, the governor said.
But Hanford cleanup remains decades behind schedule, he said.
He relied on DOE data to show that even if cleanup is sufficiently funded every year from this year forward, the earliest cleanup would be completed is 2064, but it could stretch to 2178 or later, if it ever is completed, he said.
Each year that Hanford is underfunded adds 18 months to three years to the cleanup timeline as taxpayer dollars end up being spent on just maintaining aging facilities and responding to emergency infrastructure failures, he said.
In a Senate subcommittee hearing earlier this month, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm defended the administration's latest budget request for Hanford, telling Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., it had to balance cleanup needs at all DOE sites.
Now about a third of the nation's defense environmental cleanup money goes to the Hanford site.
Inslee issues invitation
"The current posture of the federal government — to minimally fund the site while costs skyrocket and the odds of catastrophic infrastructure failure increase — cannot be the answer," Inslee said.
He added that the Biden administration should not be looking to increase the number of nuclear energy power plants and defense nuclear reactors without a plan to avoid repeating the failure to clean up the legacy of defense nuclear waste from the Cold War. The nation lacks a disposal site for used nuclear power plant fuel.
Hanford was used from World War II through the Cold War to produce nearly two-thirds of the plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons program.
Inslee has invited Young to visit Hanford with him and to meet with the communities harmed by "the prospect of a never-ending cleanup."
