By Kennedy Maize
The Republican “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (some refer to it as the “One Obese Ugly Bill Act”) would slow the already interminable Department of Energy cleanup of the now-shuttered former nuclear weapons plant in Hanford, Wash.
That’s the conclusion of an analysis of the Trump administration’s 1,224-page “Technical Supplement to the 2026 Budget” as of June 6 by Tacoma’s News Tribune newspaper and the Department of Energy’s subsequent analysis. The figures may have changed since much of the mammoth “reconciliation” legislation is a moving target in the Senate.
The newspaper said the White House Office of Management and Budget supplement included a minor $34 million cut for the multi-billion dollar Hanford cleanup. The DOE document, which is no longer available on the agency’s website, showed Hanford spending level with 2025 figures.
Nevertheless, says the News Tribune, spending at current levels “likely is inadequate to meet legal deadlines.” Overall, the administration proposal sent to Congress “would provide just under $3.1 billion” for the heavily contaminated site in eastern Washington. But Hanford “fared better than many of the other sites, which had budget cuts.” DOE is managing cleanup of more than a dozen former weapons program sites across the country, though none compard in magnitude or complexity to Hanford.
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), vice chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said the latest Hanford budget is “utterly unacceptable and will be going nowhere was far as I am concerned.” She added, “Trump’s proposal for Hanford would force us to fall behind on the cleanup mission at a critical time, leaving key milestones unmet and raising the cost on the cleanup in the long run — not to mention increasing the safety and environmental risks for the Tri-Cities.” The closely-linked cities Kennewick, Pasco, and Richland, at the confluence of the Yakima, Snake, and Columbia Rivers, have a combined population of about 375,000 and are the bedroom communities for Hanford.
Murray hammered Energy Secretary Chris Wright at a committee hearing June 6 on for not spending fiscal 2025 funds allocated for Hanford, forcing potential layoffs of subcontractors. “Hanford site is on the brink of having to lay off subcontractors and restart and entire procurement process on an impotant project because they are being directed now to hold off on implementing projects at FY ’25 spend levels,” she charged.
DOE released the money the next day for the lined landfill in the center of the 580-square-mile hunk of desert that constitutes the Hanford site, where the Manhattan Project started making plutonium for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs in 1943. The landfill has been used since 1996 for disposal of some 19 million tons of waste from the environmental cleanup. The low-level radioactive solid waste and hazardous chemical waste includes contaminated soil, demolished buildings debris, and other noxious wastes to be buried underground.
The DOE budget proposal would allocate an increase of $163 million for the eventual vitrification of some 56 million gallons of liquid nuclear and chemical wastes accumulated during Hanford’s 45 years of producing plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program. The wastes have been stored in a giant tank farm with leaks that threaten the Columbia River.
The overall spending level on the nasty high-level waste cleanup through Hanford’s Office of River Protection is $2.1 billion, an 8% increase. That increase is matched by a $163 million cut in the remaining $1 billion of the Hanford budget.
The biggest challenge at Hanford is disposing of the liquid high-level radioactive waste, created using the PUREX process to separate plutonium from the uranium fuel in the nuclear reactors that operated until 1989. DOE has been trying since 2000 to develop technology to trap the waste in melted glass so it can solidify and be safely disposed of. Solid wastes are much easier to handle than liquids.
It has been a error-filled endeavor, to the point that the Congressional watchdog Government Accountability Office last fall suggested putting the project on hold and rethink the whole idea. GAO said, “DOE intends to store the vitrified waste on-site at Hanford until the establishment of a deep geologic repository,” another so far failed DOE program that placed all its bets on Yucca Mountain in Nevada for storage of spent civilian reactor fuel, which failed for technical and political reasons.
DOE soldiered on. This summer, after billions of dollars spent, DOE will test the massive vitrification plant with simulated chemical waste. The Seattle Times reported, “Ammonia and nitrous oxide-producing chemicals are being added to plant’s melters along with glass-forming material that is heated to 2,100 degrees Fahrenheit. The molten mixture will then be poured into stainless-steel containers….” The steel cans will go into the Hanford landfill. If all goes as planned, contractors could begin treating low-level waste in July. Call it kicking the can down the road.
Next would come treatment of high-level liquid waste. The Seattle Times reported, “The High Level Waste Facility is still under construction at the vitrification plant to treat the most radioactive waste in Hanford’s underground storage tanks. A federal court consent decree requires that treatment to begin in 2033.”
How much will it cost to finish cleaning up Hanford? According to the DOE’s latest estimate, the agency’s April “2025 Hanford Lifecycle Scope, Schedule, and Cost Report,” it will take $589.4 billion to finish the job, estimated to occur in 2086, although the agency will have to monitor the site beyond 2021. The latest estimate, which comes every three years, is lower than the 2022 estimate of $640.6 billion.
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