Been there, heard that, was the reaction from Washington state’s two U.S. senators as Energy Secretary Rick Perry defended budget cuts proposed in the administration’s fiscal 2018 request for the Hanford Site. Perry was in the hot seat for three days in succession this week, answering questions about proposed funding levels for cleanup at the facility from five Northwest lawmakers.
The Department of Energy needs to know the money spent for Hanford cleanup now and for decades to come is serving the American taxpayer well, Perry said at a Wednesday hearing before the Senate Appropriations energy and water subcommittee. Stakeholders would benefit from consideration of new ways to address contamination at the former plutonium production facility and to “think outside the box,” Perry said. He noted his experience as the governor of Texas in managing large projects in a fashion to get the best results for the money spent.
“Yes, but this is a nuclear waste site. It’s extremely dangerous,” said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.). Perry cannot ignore the complex legal agreements are in place to ensure remediation is completed, she said.
Murray was particularly critical of a proposed $124 million cut to the budget of the Richland Operations Office, which oversees cleanup of Hanford’s River Corridor and Central Plateau. The office would receive $716 million for the budget year starting Oct. 1.
The community near Hanford deserves better than to continue to live with a nuclear waste site in its backyard and to hear every four years that the nation is going to do something different, she said. “There is absolutely no cheap way to do this and it has to get done,” Murray said.
On Thursday, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) grilled Perry at a budget hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. “Every energy secretary comes into the office pressured … by some OMB person who knows nothing about science, trying to do it on the cheap,” said Cantwell, the panel’s ranking member.
Then-Energy Secretary James Watkins proposed in 1991 to delay construction of Hanford’s vitrification plant, which will process the radioactive waste held in underground tanks and is not expected to be fully operational until 2036. Then the Clinton administration tried privatizing the plant, Cantwell said. Former Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham had a plan to grout tank waste, she added. Perry’s immediate predecessor, Ernest Moniz, proposed disposing of Hanford’s cesium and strontium capsules in a deep borehole, but DOE recently dropped the idea without a test borehole being drilled.
“There is a difference between doing it on the cheap and doing it as efficiently as possible,” Perry told Cantwell.
Murray asked for specifics about DOE’s plans, including whether Perry supported starting vitrification of low-activity radioactive waste at the Waste Treatment Plant, as required by the federal court-enforced consent decree. When Perry said he did support meeting that milestone, Murray said, “Well, you tell me how you would meet that” with a proposed budget that is essentially flat.
The fiscal 2018 budget for DOE’s Office of River Protection at Hanford, which oversees the Waste Treatment Plant project, would grow by $5 million, to $1.5 billion. The total site budget would be roughly $2.2 billion, not including security costs.
There is a demonstrated need to increase funding to meet the milestone, due no later than 2023, Murray said. “None of us like to write checks for a lot of money, but the alternative is just not viable,” Murray said. Inadequate cleanup could allow radioactive waste to pollute the Columbia River, she said.
Perry’s exchanges with both Murray and Cantwell grew testy at times. The energy secretary said he planned to visit Hanford before the end of summer and then he and Murray can walk across the site together. “Well, you can’t walk across it,” the senator responded. “It’s really big.” Perry told Cantwell that Hanford is the cleanup site that poses the biggest challenge for the nation. “No, Hanford is the largest nuclear waste cleanup site in the world. That is why you cannot do it on the cheap,” Cantwell said.
The partial collapse last month of the tunnel storing radioactive waste from the PUREX plant came up several times during the hearings. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) pointed out that while the tunnel has not been used for decades, it has not been cleaned up. “There is not enough action on the ground for the amount of money we spend, but apparently it is a very difficult issue,” Merkley said.
On Tuesday, Perry defended his budget to two Republican representatives from Washington — Rep. Dan Newhouse (R), who represents the district that includes Hanford, and Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R), who represents the district down the Columbia River from Hanford. “This wasn’t something this community did on its own,” but a federal wartime project, Herrera Beutler said during the House Appropriations energy and water subcommittee budget hearing. Perry assured her the federal government is committed to cleaning up Hanford; he pointed to progress toward tearing the Plutonium Finishing Plant to slab on grade by a September milestone and toward moving K Basin sludge out of underwater storage not far from the Columbia River to central Hanford.
Newhouse asked about the $8 million the administration’s budget request proposed for commissioning at the Waste Treatment Plant and what level of commissioning funding Perry envisions over the next five years as the plant prepares to start treating waste. “I would suggest the current funding is the minimum required,” Perry said. He passed on answering a question from Newhouse about concerns over reducing or eliminating payments in lieu of taxes to local governments. The payments are made to taxing districts that cannot collect taxes on Hanford land because it is not in private hands. Perry said he’d need to get back to Newhouse. “We’ll have a lot of time to talk when you tour Hanford,” Newhouse said.
