No new estimate of the multibillion-dollar cost to finish Hanford cleanup will be released until Jan. 31, 2019.
The Department of Energy is being allowed by its regulators to skip a second year of an annual report usually required by the Tri-Party Agreement. It is called the Hanford Lifecycle Scope, Schedule and Cost Report.
The last estimate made public in a lifecycle report put the remaining cost of environmental cleanup of the nuclear reservation at $107.7 billion. The estimate released in early 2016 covered cleanup to be largely completed by 2060, plus some post-cleanup oversight.
It did not include revised plans for the Hanford vitrification plant, which are expected to raise the cost of the plant by at least $4.5 billion.