The fiscal 2018 omnibus spending legislation approved by Congress by Friday morning includes $2.42 billion for the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site, not including security spending. The bill provides $203 million more for the Washington state cleanup site than requested by the Donald Trump administration for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1., and would increase funding from the current spending level of $2.34 billion, excluding security costs.
President Donald Trump must sign the legislation before a deadline of midnight Friday to avoid a government shutdown when the current stopgap budget expires.
Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell (both D-Wash.) fought for the higher Hanford funding in the omnibus bill. Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.), who represents the Hanford area, did the same, but then voted against the legislation. Newhouse said in a prepared statement he could not support its spending levels given the nation’s $21 trillion national debt.
“Despite deep cuts proposed by the White House, I’m so glad we successfully made the case once again that Hanford cleanup cannot and will not be put on the back burner,” Murray said. Cantwell had pushed for the money included in the bill to continue work to demolish the Plutonium Finishing Plant and stabilize the second PUREX Plant radioactive waste storage tunnel. The money for those projects will result in better protection of workers, the environment, and communities near Hanford, she said.
The omnibus would provide $1.56 billion for DOE’s Office of River Protection, which manages 56 million gallons of radioactive tank waste left by Hanford’s decades of plutonium production for the U.S. nuclear deterrent. That is $56 million more than the administration requested and would include $740 million for construction of the Waste Treatment Plant that will convert the waste into a stable glass form, up from the $690 million current spending. In addition, it would include $93 million for construction of the Low-Activity Waste Pretreatment System, which is needed to start treating low-activity radioactive waste as soon as the end of 2021, and $8 million for vitrification plant commissioning.
The bill directs DOE to resume design and engineering on the plant’s High-Level Waste Facility and resolve remaining technical issues at its Pretreatment Facility. Hanford stakeholders have worried that the focus on starting treatment of low-activity radioactive waste would slow those facilities, which will handle high-level radioactive waste. The bill also directs DOE to continue to address worker chemical vapor exposures related to tank waste.
The Richland Operations Office would receive $863 million under the bill, which is $147 million more than the administration’s proposal. The office is responsible for overall site operations and all cleanup work, except operations related to tank waste. The funding would cover not only the Plutonium Finishing Plant and PUREX tunnel stabilization, but work on the highly radioactive spill under the 324 Building and at the K West Basin, according to Murray’s staff.
The bill upholds Senate direction to DOE to open a resource center near Hanford to help past and present ill workers understand options for state and federal compensation programs.
