Hanford regulators criticize 2010 proposals

By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer

The Department of Energy is facing a bow wave of unfunded environmental cleanup needs at Hanford that could exceed $1 billion in the 2010 fiscal year, according to the state.

The Department of Energy and its regulators, the Washington State Department of Ecology and the Environmental Protection Agency, held a budget meeting Wednesday in Richland that included the first look at possible budget figures for fiscal year 2010 and discussion of a longer range spending schedule.

The Bush administration's budget proposal for fiscal 2009, which begins Oct. 1, is more than $600 million under what's needed to keep cleanup on schedule, according to the state. The cumulative result of DOE's failure to request adequate funding for Hanford again in fiscal 2010 would increase that to more than $1 billion, said Nolan Curtis, program administration section manager for the Department of Ecology.

DOE's long-range plan calls for DOE's Hanford Richland Operations Office to spend $1.08 billion in fiscal 2010. But that would need to be increased to almost $1.67 billion, by DOE's estimates, to meet legal cleanup requirements for the year.

That compares with the $938 million requested by the Bush administration for fiscal 2009 and under consideration by Congress.

At the remainder of Hanford, managed by DOE's Office of River Protection, DOE's long-term plans call for full funding of $690 million for the vitrification plant in fiscal 2010 and $366 million for the tank farms.

However, the long-term plan for fiscal 2009 called for $390 million to be spent at the tank farms, while the Bush administration's budget request to Congress was for $288 million.

Catching up with legal requirements calling for all of Hanford's leak-prone older tanks -- its 149 underground single-shell tanks -- be emptied of radioactive waste by 2018 is physically impossible, said Delmar Noyes, DOE acting assistant manager of the tank farms.

DOE is looking at emptying one tank a year in the near term. That's in part because the sturdier double-shell tanks that would receive the waste are near capacity and DOE is years away from being able to treat the first of Hanford's 53 million gallons of tank waste for disposal.

To meet the 2018 deadline, DOE would have to design and build 42 new double-shell tanks to add to the 28 it has now. Once they were ready, 40 tanks would have to be emptied per year from 2016 to 2018, Noyes said.

EPA and the state are concerned that too little money for Hanford in 2009 and 2010 will mean generous portions of the budgets going to maintenance and overhead.

"There just isn't a lot of money left to do cleanup," Curtis said.

For instance, DOE is proposing spending $51 million in 2010 for the K Basins line item, much of that to continue to design a system to treat radioactive sludge now held in underwater containers at the K West Basin. None of that money would actually be spent to treat sludge to prepare it for disposal, said Nick Ceto, EPA Hanford project manager.

EPA considers cleaning up the Columbia River along Hanford, which includes the K Basin, a top priority, he said.

"It's in our grasp" to have the river corridor open to greater public access in a decade, he said. "But it's slipping."

At the tank farms, DOE will be spending money in the near term to develop better technologies to empty tanks. Once treatment systems are operating, including the $12.2 billion vitrification plant in 2019, DOE will be treating waste faster than it can retrieve waste from the tanks with its present technology.

The state is calling on DOE to speed up its waste retrieval work from emptying one single-shell tank a year to two tanks a year in the near term.

DOE's most recent long-range look at Hanford spending, its certified baseline, shows a steep increase in Hanford funding to about $3.25 billion in fiscal 2016 after recent years, with the budget hovering near $2 billion or a little below. Spending would not drop back to $2 billion and below until fiscal 2038.

The long-range outlook includes increasing money for the tank farms from the $288 million in the administration's budget request in 2009 to $924 million in 2014. The increase is to coincide with preparations to start treating the tank waste for disposal, according to DOE.

Budget information is posted at www.hanford.gov and the public can comment on the budget online at the website.

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Thursday, Mar. 27, 2008

Hanford regulators criticize 2010 proposals

By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer