Oregon Public Broadcasting

A lawsuit over clean-up delays at the Hanford nuclear reservation has been averted – at least for now. Top state and federal officials met this week near Seattle.

They made progress toward new timelines to remove and treat nuclear waste. Olympia correspondent Austin Jenkins reports.

The problem is it’s taking a lot longer than expected to remove radioactive waste buried in tanks at Hanford. And the plant that’s supposed to turn that waste into safer glass logs is eight years behind schedule.

The State of Washington was on the verge of suing the feds for missing legally binding deadlines. But Mary Sue Wilson with the Washington Attorney General’s office says the latest round of talks proved productive.

Mary Sue Wilson: “We went into the discussions not particularly optimistic, we had been very clear that we expected that a lawsuit would be forthcoming in the very near future. We ended up having a lot more positive exchange of ideas than we expected.”

At the current rate of clean-up, state officials say it could take more than 140 years to remove the last of the buried nuclear waste. Inadequate funding is a key issue.

If all goes well the state and feds could announce a new set of milestones and deadlines as early as next month.