Editorial
No sleeping Chernobyl

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That day in 1998, Locke and Attorney General Christine Gregoire announced a lawsuit against the federal government for missing cleanup milestones related to the tanks. On Monday, Gregoire returned to Hanford to celebrate a major achievement linked directly to that threatened lawsuit. The lawsuit was averted four months later when then-Energy Secretary Bill Richardson took over and negotiated an aggressive tank-cleanup schedule with quantifiable deadlines.

Since then, about 3 million gallons of highly radioactive liquid waste have been removed from the single-shell tanks, about 67 of which were suspected of leaking about 1 million gallons of waste into the soil.

The waste was pumped into safer double-shell tanks. With thepumpable wastes removed, the tanks are much less likely to leak.

And workers have started to remove the sludge that can't be pumped.

Major cleanup challenges loom at Hanford, including completion of a waste-treatment plant that ultimately would turn the waste into glass logs. The state is in court with the Energy Department on other matters affecting cleanup.

The removal of pumpable liquid wastes from Hanford's risky single-shell tanks is an important achievement in a long and difficult job. It's also a testament to the state's abiding efforts to hold the Energy Department responsible for cleaning up the mess it made over five decades of nuclear-defense production.