Washington State is Frustrated With Feds Over Hanford Cleanup

Frustrated by the federal government's lack of progress in cleaning up the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, the state of Washington has issued its own plan for the work.

Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee said Monday that his plan seeks to keep the cleanup of the nation's most contaminated nuclear weapons site on schedule.

Hanford for decades made plutonium for nuclear weapons, and now is engaged in cleaning up the radioactive wastes left over from that work.

The wastes are stored in 177 giant underground tanks, some of which are leaking.

Inslee says he has become concerned by the federal government's repeated failures to meet cleanup deadlines imposed by a 2010 federal court decree. He says nearly all the court-imposed deadlines involving Hanford's storage tanks are likely to be missed.