Tuesday, May. 20, 2008

Obama’s Hanford ignorance begins in his home state

By Ken Robertson, Executive editor

For Tri-Citians, it has to be a little concerning that the leading Democratic candidate to become his party’s presidential nominee knows virtually nothing about the Hanford site and the work here to clean up the mess left behind by our nation’s nuclear weapons programs.

“I am not familiar with the Hanford site, so I don’t know what’s going on,” he told the crowd of about 3,500 that gathered in Pendleton on Sunday.

Considering that he’s served 3 1/2 years in the U.S. Senate, where bills are debated annually to set the budget for the U.S. Department of Energy and that Hanford cleanup has gotten about $2 billion annually, it seems a bit surprising that Obama would know nothing.

Perhaps even more surprising is that no one on his staff thought to brief him about the concerns related to cleanup that Oregonians share with their neighbors in Washington.

Such concerns as ensuring the Columbia River stays clean and uncontaminated for fish and people. And that the land next to the river gets cleaned up as much as possible to avoid the spread of radioactive materials, heavy metals, carcinogenic chemicals and other assorted problems.

Obama’s frank admission of his ignorance makes it clear why Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., has strongly supported Sen. Hillary Clinton.

In an editorial board at the Herald earlier this year, she said she was supporting Clinton because she was “educated” about such Northwest issues as Hanford funding, port and border security and transportation issues.

“I want someone in the White House I will not have to retrain,” Murray told the editorial board.

After Obama’s appearance Sunday, it’s clear she was speaking the truth.

More than $6 billion worth of federal spending had escaped Obama’s notice.

Even though his home state of Illinois is home to the Department of Energy’s oldest and largest national laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, and the nearby Fermilab, site of the world’s highest-energy particle accelerator.

And that at the dawn of the nuclear age, the scientists at the University of Chicago labs, which ultimately became the foundation for the Argonne lab, were the inspiration for and among the founders of the Manhattan Project, which created the world’s first nuclear weapons.

Using the plutonium created in Hanford’s reactors.

So, in addition to not knowing anything about Hanford, it seems clear Obama doesn’t know much about his own state either.

If he becomes president, Sen. Murray will have a lot of training to do.

Ken Robertson: 582-1520; krobertson@tricityherald.com