Steven Chu Blames Government Contractors For Ongoing Nuclear Waste Debacle

Steven Chu Blames Government Contractors For Ongoing Nuclear Waste Debacle

Share to Linkedin The Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation near Richland, ... [+] Washington. Hanford was a plutonium production complex. The cleanup of the Hanford site is under the direction of the U. S. Department of Energy with annual cleanup costs of $2 billion and an estimated total cost of $50 billion to $60 billion. (Photo by Jeff T. Green/Getty Images) The United States continues to struggle with legacy military nuclear waste, former Energy Secretary Steven Chu said, because the contractors making billions from it have opposed a better solution. "If you had a small R&D program that could find a much better, cost-effective way of doing it wouldn't it be worth it?" Chu asked during a Stanford University webinar last month. "Okay, $6 billion“”What's a good R&D program? Ten percent? Five percent? "It was being nibbled down to $100, 000," he said of his effort to fund R&D during his tenure as Obama's first energy secretary. "It's like in the third or fourth decimal place because the contractors who had these huge grants didn't want better ways, and they just wanted the billion per year coming to the State of Washington, going into Tennessee, going