Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said Wednesday she has heard the same message from new energy secretaries for 25 years – that they will find a new and better way to address environmental cleanup at the Hanford Site.
The latest was Energy Secretary Rick Perry, who testified on his agency’s fiscal 2018 budget request before the Senate Appropriations energy and water subcommittee. For more than two hours he took questions on a range of topics, including questions on Hanford from Murray and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.).
Murray was particularly critical of a proposed $124 million cut to the budget of the Richland Operations Office, which oversees cleanup of the River Corridor and Central Plateau at the former plutonium production facility.
Questions need to be answered on whether the money spent for Hanford cleanup now and for decades to come serves the American taxpayer well, Perry said. It would be beneficial to consider new ways to address contamination at Hanford and to “think outside the box,” Perry said. He has experience as the governor of Texas in managing large projects in a fashion to get the best results for the money spent, he added.
“Yes, but this is a nuclear waste site. It’s extremely dangerous,” Murray said. There are complex legal agreements in place to complete cleanup at Hanford and Perry cannot ignore them, she said. The community near Hanford deserves better than to continue to have a nuclear waste site in its backyard and to hear every four years the nation is going to do something different, she said.
Perry said the partial collapse in May of a tunnel storing radioactive waste from Hanford’s PUREX plant demonstrates the need to finish remediation. The tunnel has not been used for decades, but has not been remediated, Merkley said: “There is not enough action on the ground for the amount of money we spend but apparently it is a very difficult issue.”
