New energy secretary plans 1st visit to Hanford site, PNNL in Richland

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm is planning her first visit to the Hanford site and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

She is tentatively set to visit the nuclear reservation and the Department of Energy national laboratory in Richland on Feb. 25.

She also is interested in meeting with tribal members while she is in Washington state.

Granholm, the former governor of Michigan, was sworn in as energy secretary for the Biden administration a year ago.

She said during her January 2021 Senate confirmation hearing that cleanup of the Hanford nuclear reservation is “urgent.”

And she committed to requesting larger environmental cleanup budgets than those of the Trump administration, under questioning by Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.

She told Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., that Hanford cleanup is a complex project and steps need to be taken every year to address waste issues there. But progress is being made, she said.

The 580-square-mile Hanford site adjacent to Richland in Eastern Washington was used from World War II through the Cold War to produce nearly two-thirds of the plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program.

Now about $2.5 billion a year is spent there on environmental cleanup.

PNNL employs about 5,300 scientists and other professionals and conducts research on energy, national security and fundamental science. It has an annual budget of $1.2 billion, most of it from the federal government.

Granholm also said during confirmation hearings that she was excited about the Grid Storage Launchpad, a $75 million facility planned at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland. Design and construction contracts for it were awarded last spring.

The launchpad, paid for with taxpayer dollars through the Department of Energy, is planned to increase the use of clean energy and make the nation’s power grid more resilient, secure and flexible.

Granholm spoke at the October dedication of another new PNNL building, the $90 million Energy Sciences Center, in October, but the event was virtual and she was not in the Tri-Cities.

Granholm, an immigrant from Canada, is a graduate of Harvard Law School and was the attorney general of Michigan before being elected to two terms as governor.

She then joined the faculty of the University of California Berkeley in the Goldman School of Public Policy. She also served as an adviser to the Clean Energy Program of the Pew Charitable Trust.

This story was originally published February 16, 2022 at 12:59 PM.