A call to accelerate Hanford cleanup now

The people of Washington have waited long enough. For decades, the Hanford site has been a symbol of both scientific achievement and environmental burden—a place where commitments were made to clean up the nation’s largest inventory of radioactive tank waste, yet too often delayed by technical setbacks and bureaucratic inertia. That must change, and it must change now.

Today, we have a clear, urgent, and achievable path forward—one that accelerates cleanup, protects workers and communities, and saves billions in taxpayer dollars. Hanford is finally positioned to move faster, and as the official charged with leading this mission, I am insisting that we seize this moment.

Over the past year, Hanford’s pretreatment systems have proven what is possible when we push for performance. The Tank Side Cesium Removal system has already pretreated more than 1.2 million gallons of waste, removing 99.9 percent of its radioactivity and preparing it for safe disposal. That progress is real, and it is meaningful. But it is also threatened by the slow pace of waste vitrification (i.e., glass) at the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP), which—due to repeated technical challenges—has managed to solidify only 100,000 gallons in its first seven months of operations. Every week the facility sits idle, tanks stay fuller, retrievals fall behind schedule, and environmental and safety risks persist.

We cannot allow the entire cleanup mission to bottleneck behind a single technology and regulatory morass.

https://www.heraldnet.com/2026/06/25/a-call-to-accelerate-hanford-cleanup-now/