Proposed Hanford budget up slightly

The Obama administration on Thursday proposed a modest increase for Hanford's fiscal 2010 budget above the current budget.

The proposed budget that Congress now will consider includes $2.09 billion for Hanford cleanup, an increase of $24 million over the current budget.

However, some Hanford environmental cleanup projects would receive less money under the proposed budget. All are programs that are receiving some of the $1.96 billion set aside for Hanford under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act over the next 2 1/2 years.

That contributed to a mixed reaction to the proposed budget.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., pledged to use her senior leadership position to increase Hanford funding above the administration's request.

"The president's Hanford budget simply doesn't cut it," she said in a statement. "We have legal and moral obligations to meet and this budget falls short."

Murray said she called Energy Secretary Steven Chu to "make clear that this budget is a nonstarter."

Declining budgets under the Bush administration left Hanford playing catch-up on funding, she said. The stimulus funding she championed was a one-time boost, but meeting cleanup goals requires a sustained investment, she said.

The cleanup budget for DOE defense sites across the nation under the Obama proposed budget is $5.5 billion, down from almost $5.7 billion in fiscal 2009, according to Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash.

Murray had recommended a budget of $6.5 billion and Hastings had called for $6.6 billion.

"Stimulus funds were never to be used as a substitute for annual cleanup budgets," Hastings said in a statement. "Activities funded by the stimulus were always to be in addition to work that must be done each year to move cleanup forward and comply with legal agreements."

Full funding for the Hanford vitrification plant and for cleanup along the river are bright spots in the proposed budget, he said, "yet cuts in other areas are troubling."

The Tri-City Development Council called the proposal "a decent budget," after worrying the fiscal 2010 budget would take a big drop.

But TRIDEC will be asking Congress to add $135 million to the budget for cleanup along the Columbia River, the transuranic waste program, K Basin sludge cleanup and ground water monitoring, said Gary Petersen, TRIDEC vice president of Hanford programs.

The Washington State Department of Ecology, which regulates Hanford, is encouraged by the proposal when considered with the Hanford stimulus funding, Jane Hedges, nuclear waste program manager for the state, said in a statement.

"We believe the combination of funds will allow the Department of Energy, and specifically the Office of River Protection, to speed up the cleanup process, which was underfunded in the past," she said.

Money in the proposed budget is divided between the Department of Energy Office of River Protection, which is in charge of Hanford's underground tanks and the vitrification plant, and DOE's Richland Operations Office, which handles all other work.

The Office of River Protection would receive $690 million for the vitrification plant, the amount it received in 2009 and the amount DOE has said is needed under a stable funding scenario to finish building the plant and start treating radioactive waste there in 2019.

The Office of River Protection also would receive $408 million, up from $320 million this year, for emptying leak-prone underground tanks of radioactive waste and otherwise maintaining its 177 underground tanks and preparing to send the waste to the vitrification plant.

The additional money will help DOE retrieve waste from two underground tanks in 2010 and prepare to empty two more tanks, among other projects.

The Office of River Protection also is set to receive $326 million in federal stimulus money. Much of that will be spent on preparing the infrastructure needed to feed waste to the vitrification plant in 2019.

The Richland Operations Office would receive about $994 million under the budget proposal, which is $64 million less than its current budget. However, the office is receiving $1.6 billion over 2 1/2 years in federal stimulus money to accelerate cleanup work.

Among the biggest cuts proposed is for work with K Basin sludge, which would drop from $122 million to $55 million. Work has been completed to get sludge in the K East and K West Basins into underwater containers in the sturdier K West Basin, but no work to treat the sludge would start in 2010. Instead, work would continue planning how to treat the sludge.

The budget also would continue tearing down buildings in the K Reactors area and cleaning up contaminated soil there.

Work to dig up, treat and package waste temporarily buried before the nation had a repository for transuranic waste also would receive less money. That project would drop from $190 million to $133 million. However, the project is receiving $229 million in stimulus funding.

Work to protect and clean up ground water would receive about $8 million less in 2010 for a total of $177 million, but more work might be done because of $146 million in stimulus funding.

Among the big winners is cleanup along the Columbia River, with a proposed budget increase from $241 million this year to $328 million in 2010, plus $520 million in stimulus funding.

Work to clean up the Plutonium Finishing Plant would receive almost $5 million more, but other central Hanford cleanup would receive about $16 million less.

Despite progress in shipping weapons-grade materials from Hanford to Savannah River, S.C., under a national program to consolidate those materials, the security budget for Hanford would increase from $80 million to $83 million under the proposed budget. Security requirements have increased since 9/11, and the cost of Hanford security likely would have been driven much higher if weapons-grade materials, including plutonium, were remaining on site.

Congress could begin work on the budget proposal next week.