The House Appropriations Committee has found $8 million more for the latest version of its Hanford tank farms budget for next year. The committee also removed criticism of Hanford's Plutonium Finishing Plant from the report accompanying the appropriations bill. That puts the House version of the Hanford budget for the tank farms at $473 million, which is $6 million above the amount estimated to be needed to do work required by a court-enforced consent decree. It also brings it closer to the Senate version of the Hanford budget, as marked up by a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Tuesday. That Senate version includes $482 million for the tank farms, matching the Obama administration's request for Congress. Although lower, the Republican-controlled House number still is about $28 million more than the current budget for the tank farms.
Unchanged in the House budget after it moved from subcommittee to full committee is a cut of $10 million from the administration's request of $963 million for cleanup under the Department of Energy Hanford Richland Operations Office.
The Democratically controlled Senate subcommittee version of the budget includes $12 million more for that work than the administration's request.
The Richland Operations Office is responsible for all work at Hanford, except for the tank farms, where 56 million gallons of radioactive waste are held in underground tanks, and the $12.2 billion vitrification plant is being built to treat the waste. Hanford formerly created plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons program.
Among the Richland Operations Office responsibilities is cleanup of the Plutonium Finishing Plant, which the original version of the budget criticized for being behind schedule and trending over budget.
DOE, which considers the plant its highest-hazard facility at Hanford, said the project is on budget and on schedule except for removal of some complex and large glove boxes. That work has been deliberately slowed to ensure safety and improve efficiency, DOE said.
The latest House report removes the criticism.
Now the report says, "The increases requested to ramp up cleanup of the PFP within the Central Plateau Remediation are not executable and therefore not included in the recommendation. As one of its most challenging cleanup projects, the department must ensure the work schedule does not endanger workers."
Both versions of the budget include $690 million for the vitrification plant, which did not change as the budget was marked up by the House Appropriations Committee.
The House DOE budget also includes $25 million to continue work on the Yucca Mountain, Nev., nuclear repository. The Obama administration has shut down work on the project.
Hanford's irradiated fuel and high-level radioactive waste treated at the vitrification plant have been planned to be sent to Yucca Mountain.
The House report prohibits the money from being used to close the facility or to irrevocably remove Yucca Mountain as an option for disposing of waste and spent fuel from weapons programs and nuclear power plants.
"As this process continues, I will keep working to ensure that Hanford has the tools it needs," said Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., in a statement. "That includes adequate resources and moving forward with Yucca Mountain."
Hanford should not become a de facto storage facility for Hanford's high level waste because there is no place to send it "when the best option has already been identified and remains Yucca Mountain under the law," said the congressman from Pasco.
The House DOE budget also includes $114 million for small modular reactor licensing technical support. That is above the administration request and the amount in the current budget.
Once the full House and Senate have passed appropriation bills, a conference committee will reconcile differences between amounts in the two bills.
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