The annual Hanford nuclear site budget would increase by $303 million to a record $3.34 billion next fiscal year under a proposed U.S. Senate budget.
“My commitment to power the mission of the Hanford cleanup and to support the workers is unshakeable,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. “And I’m proud to have once again secured record funding for the Hanford cleanup.”
Murray, the head of the Senate Appropriations Committee, wrote and negotiated the Senate Energy and Water Development Appropriations Bill for fiscal 2025, which begins in October. The bill was approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday.
As recently as fiscal 2021, the Hanford budget was about $2.6 billion.
“Sen. Murray has delivered once again on Hanford funding,” said David Reeploeg, Tri-City Development Council vice president of federal projects. “The Senate’s budget includes critical funding for the Waste Treatment Plant, while emphasizing the importance of the entire Hanford cleanup mission.”
The proposed Senate budget for fiscal 2025 includes just over $2.2 billion for the Hanford Office of River Protection. That would cover the tank farms, holding 56 million gallons of radioactive waste in underground tanks, and the vitrification plant, or Waste Treatment Plant, being built to turn waste into a stable glass form.
The Senate’s proposed budget is $207 million more than the Biden administration’s budget request.
The House budget proposal is lower than the Senate proposal and includes $2 billion for the Office of River Protection.
Other Hanford work falls under the Richland Operations Office, including cleaning up contaminated waste sites and groundwater and tearing down buildings, plus operating the 580-square-mile nuclear reservation.
Hanford, adjacent to the Tri-Cities 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, leaving behind radioactive and chemical waste and contamination.
The Senate budget proposes $1 billion for the Richland Operations Office work in fiscal 2025, which is $27 more than the Biden administration’s budget request.
The House budget proposes just under $984 million for the Richland Operations Office, which is about $58 million less than the current budget.
The House bill that includes the Hanford budget along with other energy and water appropriations does not have enough votes now to be passed by the full House, and members left in late July for their summer recess until Sept. 9.
The Senate budget also includes $120 million for security and about $3 million for the deactivated Fast Flux Test Facility, to bring the total to $3.34 billion.
Reeploeg said TRIDEC was pleased to see the Senate budget supporting “preservation of irreplaceable Manhattan Project National Historical Park facilities.”
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Unlike Hanford, which gets an annual appropriation through the DOE Office of Environmental Management, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland gets money from multiple sources.
It’s annual funding is more than $1.5 billion, including funds from multiple DOE offices, including the Office of Science, and the Department of Homeland Security.
The 2025 Senate appropriations bill includes $360 million more for the DOE Office of Science, which supports research at PNNL, other national laboratories and universities, including in Washington state.
It includes $65 million for the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory on the PNNL camps and $19 million for construction of PNNL’s new Microbial Molecular Phenotyping Capability project, up from the $10 million proposed by the Biden administration for fiscal 2025.
The proposed Senate budget also includes $31 million for energy delivery grid operations technology, including $7 million to support efforts by PNNL to continue developing a national platform to host data necessary for grid reliability modeling and analytics to support the clean energy transition.
The Grid Storage Launchpad will open Aug. 13 on PNNL’s campus.
