State Will Require Feds To Determine Cause of Tunnel Collapse

UPDATE 3pm--Adding reaction from Energy Secretary Rick Perry

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee says the state plans to issue an order requiring the federal government to determine the cause of a tunnel collapse at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.

The enforcement action announced Wednesday also requires the Energy Department to assess if there's an immediate risk of failures in any other tunnels and take actions to safely store waste in the tunnels until a decision is made about how to permanently handle the material.

The federal agency was expected to take those actions without prodding, but the state made the move in its role as the regulator of a massive, ongoing cleanup of the site.  Inslee says the state has an obligation to protect its residents and that the action is appropriate and necessary.  The state and federal government signed an agreement in 1989 setting deadlines for Hanford cleanup activities. The state monitors activities at Hanford as part of that deal.

U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry says his agency will conduct a study to determine what led to the collapse of a tunnel at Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state.  Perry said Wednesday that the tunnel obviously deteriorated and the question that needs to be answered now is why that was allowed to happen.

Perry made the comments during a tour of Los Alamos National Laboratory in northern New Mexico, another one of the federal sites dealing with the cleanup of Cold War-era waste from decades of bomb-making and nuclear research. Los Alamos was among the federal installations that helped develop the first atomic bomb during World War II.

Perry acknowledged the problem with nuclear waste, saying the nation can no longer kick the can down the road since American lives and the health of some citizens are in jeopardy.  He said the federal government has failed over the years to remove the waste in a timely manner.

He pledged to make progress on a multibillion-dollar problem that has transcended previous administrations.

The Energy Department says no one was injured in the unoccupied tunnel, and no radioactive material escaped into the environment.