Obama will keep promise to clean up Hanford even if no Yucca, DOE official says

The Obama adminstration will keep its promise to clean up and remove radioactive waste from the Hanford reservation even if the Yucca Mountain repository program is terminated, an Energy Department official says, according to a report in the TriCity Herald in Kennewick, Wash.

Ines Triay, who runs the DOE program that is cleaning up Hanford and other contaminated nuclear weapons sites, said the blue ribbon commission on nuclear waste that President Barack Obama formed last month will come up with new strategies and technologies to aid environmental remediation.

"Those kind of powerful minds can come together to designate a path forward that is going to make a future for high-level waste and spent nuclear fuel more robust," she said.

Triay spoke at a briefing in Washington before the House Nuclear Cleanup Caucus, the newspaper reported.

Business leaders from the counties surrounding the Hanford reservation served notice this week they plan to file a lawsuit in an attempt to block the administration's plans to terminate the proposed Yucca Mountain repository site in Nevada.

Without a repository plan, they said they feared that millions of gallons of radioactive waste that would be destined for Yucca Mountain will instead be stranded at the Hanford site.