The U.S. House Appropriations Committee on Wednesday approved legislation that would increase the fiscal 2020 funding for cleanup at the Hanford Site in Washington state by about $380 million from the Trump administration’s request.
However, the funding is still about $37 million below current spending levels, according to initial figures, which do not include security funding. The overall budget for the two Department of Energy offices at Hanford would be about $2.4 billion.
The committee report for the energy and water development appropriations bills said that while the administration’s budget request “included increases at some sites, those increases were at the expense of other important cleanup activities” at sites that included Hanford, Idaho, and Oak Ridge, Tenn. “The committee’s recommendation continues to fund a balanced approach that sustains the momentum of ongoing cleanup activities more consistently across all department cleanup sites,” the bill report said.
Appropriators met the Energy Department request for $10 million for the next phase of Hanford’s Test Bed Initiative, which would convert 2,000 gallons of low activity radioactive waste into a grout-like form for disposal at the Waste Control Specialists disposal site in Texas. This approach is being tested as a possible supplemental treatment method for low-activity waste, much of which will be vitrified at the Waste Treatment Plant being built at Hanford.
Roughly 90% of the waste held in underground tanks at the former plutonium production complex is believed to be low-activity waste.
The report language requires the Energy Department to notify the House Appropriations Committee if more than $10 million is spent in 2020 on the Test Bed Initiative. It also reminded the department that meeting the federal court consent decree milestone to begin treating low-activity waste at the Waste Treatment Plant by 2023 should remain the top focus of the Hanford Office of River Protection. The Office of River Protection is responsible for tank waste at Hanford, with other cleanup and operation of the site under the Richland Operations Office.
The House version of the Hanford budget increased funding above the administration’s request for the Richland Operations Office “to support stable funding,” the bill report said. In its budget request in march, the White House requested about $629 million for the Richland Operations Office in the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, down from $865 million in funding for fiscal 2019. The House budget put spending at nearly $846 million; that is about $217 million more than the administration’s request, but roughly $19 million less than current spending.
Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.), a member of the Appropriations Committee, successfully used amendments to remove $15 million from the $251 million originally set in the House budget for Hanford river corridor and related cleanup operations. He used $10 million of that to increase the Central Plateau remediation budget to $588 million.
Newhouse, whose congressional district covers Hanford, was concerned that there be sufficient money to support the current project to relocate cesium and strontium capsules to dry storage. The capsules are now held in a storage pool that could be at risk in a severe earthquake. He also wanted to make sure that money is available for central Hanford risk reduction work, as needed, following the partial collapse of a radioactive waste storage tunnel at the PUREX Plant in 2017.
The remaining $5 million from the River Corridor line item was moved to the community and regulatory support account to bring it to a total of about $10 million, the current funding level. The additional money would make some funds available for payments in lieu of taxes, or PILT, to help offset the loss of local tax monies collected because Hanford’s 580 square miles are under federal control.
The House bill would bring funding to almost $1.56 billion in fiscal 2020 for the Office of River Protection, down from current funding of $1.57 billion. It would be about $163 million more than the administration’s request of $1.39 billion.
The Office of River Protection budget under the House bill would include almost $750 million for work at the Hanford tank farms, not including $15 million for use at the tank farms to prepare for treating waste at the Waste Treatment Plant. The $750 million is down from current funding of about $772 million but about $72 million more than the administration’s request.
The House budget for the Office of River Protection for construction of the Waste Treatment Plant is almost $781 million, which is almost $6 million less than the current budget. The administration had requested $690 million, the amount that had been established to provide stable annual funding through construction when ground was broken on the plant in 2002.
