Nikolas Peterson said he was feeling optimistic about the Hanford site cleanup at the end of 2024.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the state Department of Ecology finalized an agreement on tank waste at the site after three years of court hearings, negotiations and outreach to tribal nations and the public.

Called the Holistic Agreement, it was lauded as “a realistic and achievable course” for dealing with the site’s underground storage tanks, according to state Ecology officials.

Peterson, executive director of watchdog organization Hanford Challenge, said the agreement also formalized his organization’s desire to see guarantees the cleanup wouldn’t cut corners in the future. What’s more, the process to get to that agreement began to rebuild bridges between those working at and watching Hanford.

“I think it put us on a great track to see progress,” he told the Tri-Cities Area Journal of Business.

Only a few months into 2025 that optimism has evaporated, he said.

The sudden mid-February firings of DOE probationary workers as part of a nationwide downsizing of the federal workforce at the direction of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, led to an outcry locally and by federal lawmakers.

According to a DOE spokesperson, 14 probationary federal employees at the DOE Hanford Field Office were let go. Of those, seven requested they be rehired, and they are employed with the agency. Those rehirings were prompted by restraining orders from two judges.

But the changes keep coming at rapid pace. Several news agencies report that DOE relaunched its deferred resignation program, quoting a March 31 memo from Energy Secretary Chris Wright that it was necessary “to mitigate the effect of potential involuntary separations ... (and allow) for employees to take needed time for future planning while continuing to be paid through the designated period.”

More Hanford-related developments have happened since:

• The sudden and unexplained lease termination of a resource office for Hanford workers pursuing workers’ compensation claims.
• Elimination of travel reimbursements for members of the Hanford Advisory Board, a citizen group that weighs in on the cleanup process.
• Cancellation of meetings of related advisory groups by DOE.
• Few answers about how efforts to cut the federal budget could affect cleanup operations.
• The unexpected departure of DOE’s most senior leader only a week after DOE’s No. 2 at the site announced he would retire at the end of the year.

Peterson and others said those events do not bode well for future work at the site, which employs more than 13,000 and has an approximately $3 billion annual budget.

“If what we’ve seen from DOGE is any indication, we’re most likely to see cleanup take longer and cost more,” said Jeff Wyatt, chair of the Oregon Hanford Cleanup Board and a member of the Hanford Advisory Board.

Work continues

However, work at the site has continued. Since January workers have put the finishing touches on the disposal facility that will house currently liquid waste after it’s transformed to a stable glass state through vitrification. Radiological preparations began at the Waste Treatment Plant, known as the vit plant, in anticipation of coming treatment operations. The 23rd of 177 underground storage tanks began to be drained. A DOE spokesperson said that the layoff of probationary federal workers did not cause any stall in work at the site.

“This is an exciting time as the Hanford team advances toward stabilizing tank waste in glass later this year, drives down risks and builds up opportunities for the future,” a DOE spokesperson said in a statement to the Journal of Business. “The Department of Energy is committed to meeting cleanup responsibilities at Hanford safely and effectively while delivering on President Trump’s mission to increase innovation across the federal government and promote greater efficiency and accountability to the American taxpayers. The highly skilled team at Hanford is continuing to advance safe, effective cleanup across the site.”

Vance continues to direct the future of the site, at least in the short term. He named Brian Harkins as acting deputy manager, the No. 2 role for DOE at the site, in early April. Harkins has been at the site for more than 20 years, according to a memo sent to site staff. He has been the assistant manager for mission support since 2022, managing and delivering infrastructure and services to the site and its contractors, in everything from IT and security to utilities and emergency services. 

Michelle Mullin, one of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) project managers at the site, told the Journal the agency is on track to seek public comment on the required sitewide permit for the cleanup to move forward and has continued to review and issue approvals for storage tanks to be emptied.

“We’re just in a continuous, almost assembly line, process,” she said. “I’d say tank retrievals are going well.”

And there are observers who say the recent changes are typical of administration transitions and that it’s too soon to say whether they will hamper work at the site.

“We’re seeing it in spades with this administration,” said Tim Peckinpaugh, a lobbyist that represents organizations such as the Tri-City Development Council in Washington, D.C. He added that “having said that I’m pretty confident that when all is said and done, we’ll get back to work.”

Nuclear past and present

Two-thirds of the nation’s plutonium was produced at the Hanford site from World War II through the Cold War. That led to the creation of tens of millions of gallons of hazardous waste stored in underground tanks, tons of solid radioactive waste and contaminated groundwater and soil.

Hanford was designated a Superfund site by the EPA and it, along with DOE and Ecology, signed the Tri-Party Agreement, or TPA.

The Holistic Agreement is the latest update to the TPA. It was precluded by state Ecology officials fining DOE more than $1 million in 2020 for restricting the state’s legally mandated access to facility data as far back as 2018, in the middle of the first Trump administration.

“We’ve seen exceptional progress at the Hanford site and have built strong momentum over the last several presidential administrations,” said Stephanie Schleif, the state’s nuclear waste program manager for Ecology, in a statement to the Journal.

About $65 billion has been spent on the cleanup effort to date. That funding has paid for thousands of workers to empty storage tanks, address contamination in the soil and water and build facilities necessary to eventually treat, vitrify and store the waste at the site or transport it to other locations.

And even with the recently updated TPA, there are still ongoing discussions about other updates needed to set achievable goals for cleanup efforts.

“We’ve been doing a lot of work on that since the start of the year,” said Dave Einan, an EPA project manager.

Crews at the High-Level Waste (HLW) Facility at the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant position a shield door as a part of over-the-top work and weathering of the facility. The door will provide protective shielding for personnel when the HLW becomes operational. 

| Courtesy Bechtel National Inc.

Concerns and fears

Despite work continuing and agencies planning for the future, some expressed concern that the current momentum won’t be maintained by the Trump administration.

Schleif acknowledged that the state is “concerned about potential impacts from recent federal decisions” related to Hanford and is working to keep cleanup on track.

“Regardless of any changes, we expect the federal government to follow through on its legally binding agreements and commitments to Hanford and the people of Washington state,” she said.

While EPA officials say none of its staffing changed because of the recent federal layoffs, Trump’s appointee now leading the agency has stated he wants to cut its staffing nationwide by 65%.

Peterson said he would be surprised if anyone with DOGE is aware of what DOE staff at the site or at the Hanford Resource Center, whose lease was terminated three years before it expired and will now end later this year, even do and the importance they hold for the cleanup and the community.

“It makes me sad that we’re now at this point of wondering how much more is going to be cut,” he said. “A lot of these things I think, these cuts … this plan is not thoughtful.”

Wyatt said he sees regression when it comes to access and communication with federal agencies since mid-January. The board he chairs in Oregon, which is chartered by the state’s governor, had to indefinitely postpone its next meeting, scheduled for May, as DOE officials said they wouldn’t be able to support it.

He said his board members are eager to discuss elements of site operations such as the planned transport of transuranic and low activity waste from Hanford across Oregon to another storage site.

“Content for the meetings comes from the agencies,” Wyatt said. “If DOE’s not there, we would convene a meeting and twiddle our thumbs.”

Additionally, DOE recently notified HAB members it will no longer reimburse them for their travel expenses to attend meetings, which are held in the Tri-Cities. Instead, the meetings will be held in a hybrid format with the opportunity for participation remotely as well as in-person.

Wyatt said that change could lead to less participation and then less public involvement and knowledge of the work at the site as many HAB members live outside the Tri-Cities and are serving in a volunteer capacity.

“It’s going to be a loss of focus and that means delays,” he said.

Wait-and-see approach

Susan Coleman, who chairs the Hanford Advisory Board, said she is disappointed DOE suspended travel reimbursements, though hopes it is a temporary measure as federal budgets are scrutinized.

“I’m old school. I truly prefer in-person collaboration,” she said. “Covid showed us remote work is great from one perspective but does not help with that collaboration or team building.”

Coleman said there are HAB members concerned about potential issues resulting from the new federal administration, ranging from a slowdown in the work at the site to even the disbandment of the advisory board, which she has not seen signs of.

“I am not a sky is falling person. I’m a bit moderate, and I’ve been through a few administration changes,” Coleman told the Journal. “This one is just a little bit more aggressive than in the past.”

For Coleman, the probationary worker firings were less worrying than the offering of voluntary buyouts to federal workers by DOGE. DOE has discussed the need to retain institutional knowledge for the past 10 to 20 years, she said, and that’s threatened by folks retiring early.

Peckinpaugh, who grew up in the Tri-Cities, noted that the buyouts didn’t impact the vast majority of those employed at the site, as those working for the contractors were not eligible, nor were they part of the probationary firings.

He said he is waiting to see what happens when it comes to the Hanford budget. It could be cut, stay flat or even be increased. Project 2025, the policy platform formulated by conservative think tank Heritage Foundation and being largely followed by the Trump administration, calls for the Hanford site cleanup to be accelerated, which could mean an influx of cash, Peckinpaugh said.

A DOE spokesperson said the fiscal year 2026 budget request for the site is in the process of being finalized.

Regardless, the Tri-Cities has weathered operational shifts at Hanford in the past and it can continue to do so, especially with its much more diversified economy, he said.

EPA’s Einan pushed back on the concept that work at the site has a specific pace to maintain.

“The pace is always changing for a variety of reasons. Whether it’s budget or it’s some other technical challenge, there is no one pace,” he said. “What we are working toward is setting up our milestones and our process so we can be nimble and react to whatever those challenges are and do whatever work we can with the budget we have.”

Trust the process?

One thing Peckinpaugh said he hopes doesn’t change is the recent improvement in relations he’s seen between DOE, EPA and Ecology. The process of updating the TPA appeared to show those at the agencies that they were more aligned than opposed to each other.

“I’d hate to take a step back and not continue collaborative efforts,” he said.

Others agree that broad collaboration is key to cleanup being successful at the site and that there’s still plenty of room for improvement. Coleman and Wyatt indicated frustration they’ve long had with the agencies, particularly DOE, regarding information on how things are proceeding at the site, and they don’t see that changing with the current administration.

“All we’re getting is successful news,” Coleman said. “(DOE) does not talk about any of the challenging things, or the issues they are having.”

A DOE spokesperson said Hanford leadership welcomes questions from members of the public, including from members of the Hanford Advisory Board. The board is regularly briefed and DOE looks forward to the next public meeting on April 8, when some of the board's committees are scheduled to gather.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report in September 2024 that looked at how DOE engages with the communities at four of its sites, including Hanford.

The report noted that a lack of a cohesive engagement strategy across all of DOE’s Environmental Management offices, along with the secrecy and mistrust cultivated by the history and contamination at the sites, could hinder its ability to include communities in the cleanup process.

GAO recommended senior leadership with DOE’s Office of Environment Management review its current engagement practices and plans and develop a unified approach and goals to engage the public at each site. Environment Management leadership concurred with the report’s recommendations and indicated it would strive to implement them through 2025-26.

“In this context, (Environmental Management) has an opportunity to re-envision how it designs and uses its site-specific … advisory boards and address the challenges faced by (them),” the report stated.

Peterson concedes it’s possible he could be surprised that federal funding sustains the progress of the cleanup and the seed of collaboration planted in recent years continues to bloom.

But he and others are not confident that will be the case.

“I think there’s things going on behind the scenes we don’t even know about,” Wyatt said.