Washington US Senator Patty Murray pushing back on proposed cuts to Hanford cleanup

President Trump has proposed cutting the funding for cleaning up the radioactive waste at Hanford by $400 million, and the House Appropriations Committee proposed even bigger cuts. Washington’s senior U.S. Senator Patty Murray long fought for “a budget that lives up to the federal government’s moral and legal obligation” to clean up decades of highly radioactive waste.

Although Hanford got a record $3.2 billion for the current fiscal year, the Washington State Ecology Department said the actual amount needed to fully fund the cleanup is $6.15 billion, and that $6.76 billion will be needed for 2027. We talk with Murray about Hanford and how Congressional budget negotiations are going.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. We start today with big questions about the future of funding for cleanup at the Hanford nuclear reservation. In the spring, President Trump proposed a cut of $400 million. The Republican-led House Appropriations Committee put forward an even bigger cut. But Washington’s senior U.S. Senator, Democrat Patty Murray, is once again pushing back. She successfully secured a record level of funding for the site for the current fiscal year, which is about to end, and she says that the cleanup of decades of radioactive waste needs more money, not less, if the federal government is going to live up to its moral and legal obligations. Senator Murray joins me now. Welcome to the show.

Patty Murray: It is really nice to be chatting with you today.

Miller: I wanna first talk about the current fiscal year funding for Hanford. As I mentioned, you secured record federal funding for the Hanford nuclear reservation for the current fiscal year, the one that’s gonna end very soon. How did you do that?

Murray: Look, I am passionate about this. I have a long history and will always continue to fight to make sure that we are funding the nuclear waste cleanup at Hanford. I go way back on this. My father was actually in Kennewick. That’s where he lived when they built the nuclear site, and I know what that community gave up in order for us to put together a nuclear bomb that won a war. And the result of that is they now have a huge waste situation there that can affect the safety of the entire Northwest, if not the country, if we don’t get it cleaned up. We owe that community, we owe people, we owe all the workforce that is there, we owe the entire country the legacy of cleaning up what we needed to do many years ago in order to win a war.

Miller: That is an argument you’ve been making for a while. I’m curious how you made the political argument that won the day to get a record amount of funding for the current fiscal year, in what was, I mean, maybe this coming year is even tighter, but it wasn’t like last year was easy. I’m curious about the politics of this as you see it.

Murray: Because what I just said to you, I say to my Republican colleagues, I say to my committee members on the Appropriations, I say it to every president we have ever had, to every secretary of energy, and to everyone, that we have a moral and legal obligation to this community, and I work hard to make the case.

Miller: To be clear, the Washington State Department of Ecology says that the current fiscal year’s record allocation still falls well short of what would be required to meet the cleanup milestones under the legally binding tri-party agreement. The state agency says that instead of $3.2 billion for the current fiscal year, it would need to be almost double that, $6.15 billion to be compliant. What is not happening that should be happening currently because of that disparity?

Murray: Well, I think technically, you would have to ask the Department of Energy and the Department of Ecology what specific parts are not being funded right now, but I work really hard to get the overall funding so that those decisions can be made under the tri-party agreement and under what we need to be doing right now. Look, I will tell you this: last year, we saw an incredible milestone made at Hanford, where we now are, for the first time, turning nuclear waste into glass.

That has been a goal for a long time. Glass. So it won’t leak into the Columbia River or the water system and affect our fish and our safety and our entire communities. We have to meet that goal now. I’m sure the Department of Ecology will say they want to do it faster. I’d love to be there, but at least we are there. We are now moving towards that goal and we’re making real progress.

Miller: That is the vitrification plant, the first phase of the vitrification plant that our listeners – well, if they’re careful listeners – that they’ll be very aware of it. Now, I want to turn to the current proposals, because they have a great bearing on the second phase, the high-level waste facility part that has not yet been built for vitrification. As I mentioned in my intro, the president put forward a proposed budget that would cut something like $400 million from the Hanford site. Then the House Appropriations Committee put forward its own proposal, which would put even less money to Hanford, and one of the big cuts would be in money for this planned high-level waste facility, the second phase of the vitrification plant. What would that mean?

Murray: That is a horrific step backwards in our goal to make sure that we are doing everything we can to contain the nuclear waste at this site. We have made a lot of progress. If we do not fund the continued progress right now, we will never meet our goals of getting this waste cleaned up. So I am throwing out the president’s budget and the House budget, and I am going to do everything I can to make sure we do not move backward at this critical time.

Miller: The House Appropriation Committee’s budget documents say that “major construction activities are not yet ready to proceed.” My understanding is that is in reference to the high-level waste portion of the vitrification plant, and they wrote that “available resources are better directed toward active cleanup priorities, sustaining site operations, and reducing environmental liabilities.” What’s your response?

Murray: You know what, that’s like saying that the roof on your house is leaking really badly, but you’re gonna put up gutters because you’re gonna get that rainwater that’s coming down. That is just a short-sighted decision that you do not make for your own house, even though sometimes, you’ve got to look at budgets. But where we are right now with Hanford is we need to replace that roof, and we need to do it in a smart, responsible way. Time is not on our side. Making these budget cuts now with some kind of short-sighted excuses will only harm our state, our region, the safety of our entire Pacific Northwest. We cannot move backwards.

Miller: The Hanford cleanup, which we’ve been talking about here, cleaning up decades of waste from the production of plutonium, it gets a ton of attention, understandably and appropriately when we focus on this huge parcel of land on the Columbia Plateau, but there’s also a huge concentration of national laboratories doing work that is, a lot of it is unrelated to the cleanup itself. How have those labs been faring in the last few years amid an unprecedented reduction in federal spending on basic science?

Murray: You know what, one of my huge concerns, and it should be all of our concerns, is that this administration, the Trump administration, has decided that we no longer need science. And it has impacted our PNNL budgets. Why is it important to us each individually? Because the work and the research and the science that they are doing right now will reduce our energy bills in the future. It will make sure that we are safe and secure, whether it’s cybersecurity or nuclear waste security. All the things that make a difference, maybe in the back of our minds, but you leave them in the back of your minds and you don’t pay attention to it, it becomes a gigantic, huge problem in the future.

Science is critical. This administration is trying to throw it out. Making sure that we keep going on the critical research at PNNL is just as important as everything else we’re doing. I have fought back. We have done everything we can. I was able to add some money for PNNL and our other research institutes, but this is something really that people need to stand up and speak out. We’re not gonna remove our forward progress in this country; for the safety and security of our grandchildren and generations to come, we have to focus on this.

Miller: How much have the political or fiscal realities changed since you were able to secure record Handford funding less than a year ago?

Murray: So obviously everything is political right now because we’re coming up on an election and everyone is kind of on pause, hold your breath until they see what happens in the election.

Miller: And budgets are always political to begin with, even in a true off year, budget year.

Murray: True. But I will tell you this if, if this country steps up in a dramatic way and rejects Trump’s administration’s cuts to everything and the increased cost in energy and the lack of focus on safety and security, basic things, rejects that. That will give us a strong backing to go in in November and fight for these budgets that are so critical. And I’m really hoping that the winds are right and the votes are out there and people get out and vote and send a strong message to this administration that we do care about our region, our country, our people, and our investments that make us safe and secure.

Miller: And just so we’re all on the same page about the timing, am I right that the federal fiscal year technically ends at the end of this month, so October 1 should be the beginning of the new one, but a stopgap was passed, so you have until what, December 11 or so for the new fiscal year budget?

Murray: Yeah, and let me tell you why we did that. We had to pass what is called a continuing resolution to go past the September 30 deadline. Why? Because Republicans wanted us to agree to increase the defense side of the budget for the war in Iran by four times the amount of non-defense. They want a $1.5 trillion budget for the war, and I said no, I will agree to extend this past the elections because I think voters are going to turn out dramatically, that they don’t want us to continue to spend their taxpayer dollars in a war in Iran, and that will have an impact on my ability to make sure we have a budget done in December that reflects our basic needs here in the United States.

Miller: And just finally, I want to turn to another Hanford issue that we talked about recently and relatively briefly, a reduction in the size and prominence of the Hanford Advisory Board. The federal administration’s gonna shrink the makeup of the board and reduce the number of agencies that the board reports to. What impact do you think this change will have?

Murray: Well, it’s hard to predict, but I have always believed that the more transparent you are, the more input that you have, the more really good basic information that people have, and the more people involved in those decisions get us to a better spot at the end. I have no idea why this Trump administration is silencing voices.

Miller: Senator Murray, thanks very much.

Murray: All right, thank you.

Miller: That is Democratic U.S. Senator Patty Murray from Washington. As a reminder, we did a week of Hanford stories in 2024, about two years ago. You can find that on the website for today’s show, OPB.org/thinkoutloud.

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