Feds Propose 17-Year Delay in Start of Hanford Nuclear Cleanup

"The Energy Department has proposed a 17-year delay in building a complex waste treatment plant at its radioactively contaminated Hanford site in Washington state, pushing back the full start-up for processing nuclear bomb waste to 2039.

The department submitted the 29-page plan in federal court as part of a suit to amend an agreement with the state that requires the plant to start operating in 2022.

A series of serious technical questions about the plant's design have caused one delay after another. Two of the major facilities at the cleanup site, which resembles a small industrial city, are under a construction halt ordered in 2013 by then-Energy Secretary Steven Chu."

Ralph Vartabedian reports for the Los Angeles Times November 18, 2015.