Billions of dollars could soon come for clean-up of the Hanford Nuclear Site if Congress can keep that in the federal budget.
In a subcommittee hearing on the U.S. Department of Energy’s budget, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) says she has strong feelings on Hanford. Murray says, “The federal government has a legal and moral obligation to clean up the Hanford site and protect Hanford workers.”
Murray questioned Deputy Energy Secretary, David Turk, about tens of millions of dollars in cuts for Hanford’s Richland operations office. Turk says with decades of work still to do, they have to make thoughtful choices. “Of our over $8 billion budget for the environmental management portfolio,” Turk says, “$3 billion of that is for Hanford. That is the largest request in recent history for Hanford.
Majority Republicans in the House have called for programs with yearly spending to be cut back to 2022 spending levels including the Hanford clean-up program. Turk says that would mean millions of Americans losing programs like weatherization, which he says saves a billion dollars a year in energy costs. He also told Murray DOE would have to lay off roughly 5,200 scientists, which means a lot of planned research would have to be canceled, with the risk a lot of those scientists would find work in other countries. Murray talked about the importance of continuing research here in the U.S. so that our country continues as a global leader in innovations. She says that will keep the jobs that come with those discoveries within our borders instead of allowing them to go to competitor countries, like China. Murray says those DOE investments aren’t just important for innovation, but that they also help to ensure the security and reliability of our electrical grid, that our energy supply is abundant and cheap, and that they ensure national security, including the security of our nuclear arsenal.
You can see Senator Murray’s opening statement and her questions for Deputy Secretary Turk in the videos below:
