Record Hanford budget proposal still far below nuclear cleanup costs, U.S. senator says

The Biden administration has made the highest request in history for environmental cleanup of the Hanford nuclear reservation, said Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm during a Senate subcommittee hearing.

But Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said she remains concerned about the long-term cost and schedule projections for the site.

Murray also protested the proposed elimination of federal dollars for Tri-Cities area taxing districts next year for the 580 square miles of Hanford site land where no tax money can be collected.

“The Tri-Cities really rely on that funding, and they are owed that funding as the result of the sacrifices and commitments that community made during World War II,” Murray said.

The administration’s proposed budget for Hanford in fiscal 2022 would spend about $2.5 billion on Hanford in fiscal 2023, not including spending for security and some other costs.

But the most recent lifecycle cost projection for the remainder of Hanford cleanup estimated as much as $677 billion yet to be spent, Murray pointed out at a Department of Energy budget hearing of the Senate Appropriations Energy and Water Subcommittee hearing last week.

Cleanup could continue until 2078, she said, although the worst-case scenario in the Lifecycle Scope, Schedule and Cost Report projected cleanup would take decades longer.

Using the 2078 completion date, cleanup would require Congress to budget more than $11 billion a year for the next 57 years, Murray said.

“That is a long ways off the roughly two and a half billion it’s funded at right now,” she said. “Do you have any thoughts for us on if there are opportunities to bring down these lifecycle costs?”

Any cost reductions must not come at the expense of safety or meeting legal requirements for cleanup, she said.

Granholm said there is now no “silver bullet” to substantially bring down costs, but research continues to find new and more efficient strategies.

Hanford PILT payments

On the proposal to eliminate payments in lieu of taxes, or PILT, next year, Granholm pointed out that when past administrations have attempted to at least partially eliminate the payments, Congress has restored funding.

“We’d like to see it in the budget,” Murray responded.

The administration’s budget proposal for fiscal 2022 eliminated all PILT funding for the two DOE cleanup sites that historically have received the highest payments, Hanford in Eastern Washington and the Savannah River site in South Carolina.

Payments are billed to the federal government based on the amount of land used by DOE and tax rates for similar land that is privately.

In Benton, Franklin and Grant counties, which all have Hanford land, much of the PILT money is used for schools and also for roads, libraries, health care, indigent veterans and other needs.

“It can’t be cut back or eliminated in any way,” Murray said.

Benton County, which billed DOE $7.2 million in Hanford PILT as recently as 2017, reduced its bill to $3.8 million this year under revised assessment methods in an attempt to get DOE to make the payment and make it on time.

In exchange, the county expects DOE to continue to support local services that rely on tax payments and for local Hanford DOE officials to work with DOE Headquarters and the White House Office of Management and Budget to make sure the DOE budget covers PILT payments.

Hanford was used during World War II and the Cold War to produce two-thirds of the plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program. The defense work left the site massively contaminated with radioactive and other hazardous chemical waste.