Hanford was leaking radioactive waste at a rate of 150 to 300 gallons annually.
FORBES: Nuclear Waste Leaks Worse than Thought in Washington
The memo was acquired by the watchdog group Hanford Challenge and released to the media yesterday.
FORBES: Bechtel Incompetent To Complete Hanford Nuclear Waste Cleanup: DOE Memo
The Hanford facility processed plutonium for nuclear weapons during World War II and the Cold War.
FORBES: Bechtel Incompetent To Complete Hanford Nuclear Waste Cleanup: DOE Memo
It has three machines, one near Livingston, Louisiana, and two at Hanford in Washington state.
Chemical reprocessing at Hanford would generate 22, 000 tonnes of high-level waste and 500, 000 tonnes of low-level waste.
Nagler gathered the original Hanford Reach samples in fall 1999 and took additional samples in November 2000.
It is clear by watching Gill's team perform their time-consuming daily tasks that Hanford won't be decontanimated quickly.
Last month's discovery occurred along the Columbia River corridor, Hanford's most sensitive area.
The stimulus money will reduce the clean-up time by years, according to Jon Peschong, who oversees the federal project at Hanford.
The Hanford clean-up "has been plagued by massive cost and schedule problems - and almost no progress, " according to the report.
John McCain, R-Arizona, and Tom Coburn, R-Oklahoma, listed Hanford as one of 100 sites where stimulus money may have been wasted.
Hanford became a focal point of U.S. nuclear efforts beginning in 1943, when aspects of the Manhattan Project were moved there.
"We need to be sure the federal government maintains its commitment and legal obligation to the cleanup of Hanford, " Inslee said.
The cow's carcass was at a Baker Commodities Inc. rendering facility in Hanford, California, according to company Executive Vice President Dennis Luckey.
The Energy Department says the cuts would postpone work at the department's highest-risk sites, including the Hanford Nuclear Reservation near Richland, Wash.
Gerry Pollet, who runs a Hanford watchdog organization, says he supports using stimulus money to rid the nuclear site of its radioactive waste.
During the Cold War, Hanford was a buzzing hive of activity, eventually becoming the main source of plutonium production for the nation's nuclear weapons program.
The Kennewick area has received a flurry of stimulus money to clean up the Hanford nuclear waste site, some of which flowed to local firms.
Samples in 1999 from fall chinook salmon in the Columbia River's Hanford Reach show that four-fifths of the females spawning there apparently began life as males.
Ken Brutzman, who owns a local office furniture store, said his business was "at a standstill" last year before the orders from Hanford contractors started pouring in.
Today, the Hanford site is a virtual ghost town and those involved in the clean-up project say they will need every dollar of the federal stimulus funds.
The activities left more than 1, 000 contaminated sites around Hanford.
Hanford is now the most contaminated Cold War weapons-production facility.
FORBES: Nuclear Waste Leaks Worse than Thought in Washington
The appearance of more radioactive soil at Hanford illustrates the difficulties the federal government faces in cleaning up nuclear-waste sites, many of them the legacy of Cold War-era research.
Hanford began receiving stimulus dollars in March 2009, which helped the surrounding cities and towns avoid the catastrophe that has plagued other communities impacted by the recent economic downturn.
The close genetic relationship of those Priest Rapids fish to the Hanford Reach chinook suggested that the river environment was responsible for the unusual results in the Hanford females.
Hanford, which the Department of Energy says is the U.S.'s biggest environmental cleanup site both by size and by cost, occupies 586 square miles of desert along the Columbia River.
The money is also created jobs for about 1, 400 people at Hanford, including Joe Gill who manages a team that is tearing down equipment that is heavily contaminated by radiation.
Thanks to Hanford's sustained ability to soak up federal dollars, the great recession skipped over Richland, Kennewick and Pasco, fast-growing towns on the Columbia river that call themselves the Tri-Cities.
The material that went into Fat Man, the plutonium bomb detonated over Nagasaki, was made at Hanford, which at its peak consisted of nine nuclear reactors and five plutonium reprocessing plants.
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