Doc Urges White House to Restore Vit Plant Funding

By Annette Cary, Tri-City Herald, Kennewick, Wash.

Jan. 28–U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., is urging the White House and the Department of Energy to restore funding for Hanford’s massive vitrification plant in the fiscal year 2007 budget.

The president’s budget proposal, which includes funding for the Hanford nuclear reservation, is scheduled to be delivered to Congress Feb. 6.

In the fiscal year that started in October, money to design and build the vitrification plant, or Waste Treatment Plant, was reduced to $526 million. The project began with a plan to set funding at $690 million each year of construction.

“I’ve made clear that I believe the administration’s proposals to reduce funding last year were unjustifiable, serious errors that have compounded challenges at the WTP,” Hastings wrote Friday in a letter to Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman and Joshua Bolten, director of the Office of Management and Budget.

The reduced budget came after problems at the plant in 2005 that included the need for a lengthy, detailed check of the design after it was discovered that design standards might be inadequate for a severe earthquake.

That and other problems, including the rising cost of steel and difficulty finding suppliers with experience in meeting nuclear standards, pushed the projected price higher and increased the time needed to complete the project. New estimates have put the cost at as much as $9.6 billion, up from $5.8 billion.

The addition of an inadequate budget for fiscal year 2006 “has led to a deeper slowdown in construction than was necessary and will directly increase the length of time and total cost of completing the vitrification plant project,” Hastings said.

The plant is required to be ready by 2011 to turn some of the worst radioactive waste among the 53 million gallons held in underground tanks into a stable glass form for permanent disposal. The waste, some in leak-prone underground tanks, was created by past production of plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program.

The state estimates the plant may not open until 2018, seven years past a legal deadline.

“It is critical that the administration help correct the impacts caused by their WTP funding reduction proposals last year,” Hastings said.

“This is an important step in setting the path forward for completing the WTP project and upholding the federal government’s responsibilities to the state of Washington.”

Last February, the White House proposed spending $626 million on the vitrification plant in fiscal year 2006.

Hastings led an effort to get all 14 U.S. congressional representatives from Oregon and Washington to request that the budget be restored to $690 million and won House support for a budget of $690 million.

However, when House and Senate budgets were reconciled, the budget was cut to $526 million, because of concerns over the project and the need to find money for hurricane relief for the Gulf Coast.

The White House floated a second proposal to reduce the vitrification plant by an additional $100 million, but Congress did not approve it.

After the start of fiscal year 2006, Bechtel National announced that 515 employees would be laid off in addition to 1,200 job cuts that began in spring 2005.

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