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Senators seek stimulus funds for nuclear cleanup

Senators seek stimulus funds for nuclear cleanup
seattlepi.com By SHANNON DININNY ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER January 19, 2009 RICHLAND, Wash. — Miles of tainted groundwater. Dozens of burial sites, silently brimming with dangerous radioactive waste. Weapons-grade plutonium still to be shipped off the nation’s most contaminated nuclear site.The Hanford nuclear reservation in southeast Washington presents no shortage of work toward cleaning up the site, work that is expected to continue for decades, but managers say they will miss 23 deadlines this year because budgeted funds were insufficient…………………..The federal government retains ownership of the properties, most of them highly contaminated and often near major waterways, threatening public health and the environment. Since the mid-1990s, the Energy Department has spent $7.3 billion to $5.5 billion on environmental cleanup nationally each year.

The longer the cleanup drags on, the more technically challenging and expensive it gets, said Susan Gordon, director of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability in Washington D.C………………………………..At Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in northern California, EPA fined the Energy Department $105,000 for failing to clean up groundwater contaminated by hazardous chemicals, plus $10,000 a week until the department resumes the effort………………………….

A House stimulus bill released last week includes $500 million for such cleanup. Senators in states with significant cleanup responsibilities are pushing for $6 billion over four years, $1.5 billion a year.

Hanford, where overall cleanup costs are expected to top $50 billion, gets about $2 billion of the Energy Department’s total cleanup budget annually.

Some work could be accelerated with additional money, said David Brockman, manager of the agency’s Richland operations office, which oversees half of the Hanford cleanup. He cited work to pump-and-treat contaminated groundwater, cleanup of two aging pools that once contained spent nuclear fuel and efforts to retrieve highly radioactive waste from the site’s central plateau.

Cleanup of the plateau, which holds some of the most dangerous waste, has slowed because it is farther from Columbia River, the principal waterway in the Pacific Northwest.

Senators seek stimulus funds for nuclear cleanup

January 20, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized