Hanford nuclear site cleanup gets $2B of stimulus

The Department of Energy will spend about $2 billion of stimulus money to speed some of the cleanup at the Hanford nuclear reservation, the nation's most contaminated site.

The site in south-central Washington will receive nearly one-third of the stimulus money designated for environmental work at former World War II- and Cold War-era weapons sites in 12 states. The infusion announced Tuesday roughly equals Hanford's annual cleanup budget.

Hanford was created as part of the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb during World War II. It produced plutonium for the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, and contributed to the U.S. nuclear arsenal throughout the Cold War.

For the past two decades, it has been the focus of an extensive cleanup estimated to top $50 billion once completed.

Already, news of the stimulus money allowed the Energy Department and its contractors to continue to employ 250 people who were set to be laid off, said Dave Brockman, manager of the Energy Department's Richland Operations Office.

The Energy Department anticipates roughly 4,000 jobs at Hanford will be created or saved with the stimulus, he said. "That's a tremendous boost, both for our community and the cleanup of the site," Brockman said.

A particular focus of the stimulus money will be treating contaminated groundwater near the Columbia River, one of the most important waterways in the Pacific Northwest.

The remnants of Hanford's nuclear work include 53 million gallons of radioactive brew stored in underground tanks, some of which are known to have leaked into the aquifer. Other projects include cleanup of contaminated soil, waste disposal and demolition of former weapons buildings.

The stimulus spending is intended to shrink the active cleanup area of the 586-square-mile site to 75 square miles or less by 2015.