Latest Hanford cleanup plan must be scrutinized

By The Herald Editorial Board

There are busted budgets and over-promised deadlines. Then there is the Hanford cleanup.

Recent projections for cost and completion of the task of cleaning up radioactive and toxic wastes at the nuclear facility in southwest Washington now has brought state and federal agencies together, following four years of negotiation, to issue a draft of an amended cleanup plan with the hope of speeding up the processing of some wastes, in time to avoid the greatest environmental harm from the radioactive material already leaking from aging tanks.

But before that plan moves forward, more clarity on the plan and public consensus on the best path forward will be be necessary.

History and legacy: Located northwest of Washington’s Tri-Cities of Richland, Pasco and Kennewick and their population of 311,000 people, the 580 square-mile federal nuclear reservation was prominent in the birth of the nuclear age and in winning World War II and defending America through the Cold War. Its facilities and workers produced nearly two-thirds of the plutonium for the nation’s nuclear arsenal, including that of the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, on Aug. 9, 1945.

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