Oregon Public Broadcasting

A new government contractor is taking over the job this week of managing some of the waste at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in southeast Washington.

The new outfit will oversee 53 million gallons of radioactive goo that are stored in unstable underground tanks near the Columbia River. Richland correspondent Anna King reports.

A federal contractor called CH2M Hill is handing over its duties at Hanford to a new company Washington River Protection Solutions.

The federal government praised CH2M Hill for its nine years of managing waste in what’s called a tank farm. But the contractor was responsible for a major leak of radioactive goo a year and a half ago.

Carrie Meyer is a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Energy. She says keeping an eye on the Cold War era waste is a big job.

Carrie Meyer: "We will be putting a closer focus on work that is transitioning to insure that things are going as planned."

In the switch between contractors, top managers will change, but most of the workers and many of the policies will stay the same.