Other LanguagesRadiation detected between walls of another double-shell tank Thursday night
OLYMPIA — Attorney General Bob Ferguson issued the following statement regarding today’s report that another double-shell tank holding toxic, radioactive waste at Hanford may be leaking.
“Today’s news of another potential leak in a tank at Hanford only strengthens my resolve to hold the Department of Energy accountable for its responsibility to clean up this contaminated site,” Ferguson said. “This isn’t the first potential leak, and it won’t be the last.
“The risks at Hanford to workers and the environment are all too real, and today’s news is just another illustration of how tenuous the situation is.”
Ferguson filed a lawsuit in September 2015 against the U.S. Department of Energy and Washington River Protection Solutions to protect workers at the Hanford facility. A year earlier, the Attorney General and the Department of Ecology took the Department of Energy to court over the federal agency’s failure to live up to a previous consent decree governing its Hanford clean-up efforts. The case involved the retrieval of a significant portion of Hanford’s tank wastes, as well as deadlines for construction of a waste treatment plant to treat those and other remaining tank wastes.
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The Office of the Attorney General is the chief legal office for the state of Washington with attorneys and staff in 27 divisions across the state providing legal services to roughly 200 state agencies, boards and commissions. Visit www.atg.wa.gov to learn more.
Contacts:
Peter Lavallee, Communications Director, (360) 586-0725; PeterL@atg.wa.gov