While the head of the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management (EM), Tim Walsh, has publicly expressed hopes of accelerating cleanup of Cold War and Manhattan Project sites, no speedup is reflected in a fiscal 2027 budget justification.
The estimated final remediation of the Hanford Site in Washington state is currently forecast to fall somewhere between 2086 and 2100, according to the office’s 2027 justification document. The DOE estimate for the final cleanup of Hanford remains unchanged from the projected range laid out in EM’s fiscal 2026 budget justification document.
Meanwhile, completion of nuclear cleanup at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina is expected to occur between 2080 and 2088. This SRS range is actually further out into the future than last year’s estimate of between 2065 and 2074.
It is worth noting that the final remediation completion schedule looks at the entire Cold War or Manhattan Project site and not any single cleanup contract or environmental project at the property.
Idaho National Laboratory’s projected final cleanup also slips, being listed between 2087 and 2094 in the latest document. By contrast the year-ago budget justification listed a date range of between 2064 and 2077. Idaho is the site of several test reactor projects.
The Paducah Site in Kentucky, home to old gaseous plant facilities, is not expected to see full remediation until 2082, according to the latest document. That’s slightly farther out than the 2079 to 2081 range posted in the fiscal 2026 document. Paducah is the proposed site for a future data center.
As for the Portsmouth Site in Piketon Ohio, its final cleanup should occur between 2058 and 2060, according to the latest document. That is unchanged from the prior estimate.
The West Valley Demonstration Project in western New York continues to list a final remediation date of 2051. All other sites being cleaned up by EM have final cleanup expected in the 2040s or the 2030s.
DOE’s Office of Environmental Management did not immediately respond to an inquiry on why some timelines have slipped.
No remediation date is listed for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico. WIPP is the nation’s only deep underground disposal site for defense-related waste and its cleanup date will be affected by how quickly other DOE sites are finished, according to the justification document.
The White House has requested about $8.2 billion for EM, down from $8.5 billion in fiscal 2026, which ends Sept. 30.
EM’s budget justification typically includes a chart in which the government takes a stab at predicting when site remediation will be completed.