Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) on Wednesday pressed Energy Secretary Rick Perry to ensure that a focus on particular projects at the Hanford Site does not come at the expense of others.
Perry and other Energy Department officials appeared before the Senate Appropriations energy and water subcommittee to discuss the agency’s $30.6 billion budget request for fiscal 2019. During her time at the mic, Murray said she doesn’t want the federal court mandate that processing of low-activity waste begin by 2023 at Hanford’s Waste Treatment Plant to shift too many resources away from other work at the massive nuclear cleanup site in Washington state.
When asked, Perry told Murray his agency had not placed the Pretreatment Facility at WTP in “preservation mode.” The Pretreatment Facility, one of four major components of the larger plant, would separate radioactive waste now stored in tanks into low-activity and high-level radioactive waste streams. That waste — 56 million gallons in storage now — would then be converted at other WTP facilities into a glass form for safe disposal.
Perry also said DOE would soon make an announcement on cleanup of the C Tank Farm at Hanford, although he did not offer details or say when.
Although the fiscal 2019 budget request would keep construction spending at WTP flat at $690 million, tank farm spending would drop $73 million from fiscal 2017 levels to $733 million, reflecting reduced costs for the pretreatment system.
The Energy Department for fiscal 2019 has requested $1.4 billion for its Office of River Protection, which oversees tank waste operations at Hanford. The Richland Operations Office, which manages other environmental remediation programs, would get $747 million for the budget year starting Oct. 1.
The Energy Department’s nuclear cleanup mission otherwise largely went unmentioned during the hearing, though Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) told Perry that the transition to a new legacy nuclear cleanup contractor at the Los Alamos National Laboratory must go smoothly. Newport News Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos (N3B) will take over from Los Alamos National Security (LANS) at the end of the month.
The latest DOE budget request includes $6.6 billion for the Office of Environmental Management for the next fiscal year.
