State, feds begin talks on Hanford cleanup

RICHLAND — Federal and state officials entered formal negotiations Wednesday over long-stalled projects to clean up the nation's most contaminated nuclear site, including an over-budget plant to treat highly radioactive waste and the retrieval of that waste from underground tanks.

The talks are among the most significant negotiations over cleaning up the 586-square-mile Hanford site since the state and federal governments signed the 1989 Tri-Party Agreement, a pact that established cleanup deadlines.

One deadline long missed is for the vitrification plant, designed to convert radioactive waste into glasslike logs for disposal. The plant, now estimated at $12.2 billion, is eight years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget.

Also lagging is a project to retrieve the waste from 177 underground tanks, some of which have leaked into the aquifer, threatening the nearby Columbia River.

The two projects involve some of the most technically difficult work among nuclear-waste projects nationwide, said Jay Manning, director of the state Department of Ecology.

Nevertheless, state officials are dismayed by the delays, he said, and aren't ruling out a lawsuit if a compromise can't be reached.

"This is going to be difficult. It's going to be very challenging," Manning said. The federal government created Hanford in the 1940s as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb.