KENNEWICK — Trump’s nominee for energy secretary called finishing the environmental cleanup at the Hanford nuclear site in Eastern Washington critical when he was questioned at a Senate hearing Wednesday.
‘”Hanford gave a lot to this country and we … left a mess and that needs to be cleaned up,” he told Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., during a Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources nomination hearing.
Nominee Chris Wright also praised national laboratories, including Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, saying the United States must lead the world in innovation and technology breakthroughs.
Together Hanford and PNNL have annual budgets of more than $4.5 billion, contributing significantly to the Tri-Cities area economy.
Wright described himself at the hearing as a “science geek, turned tech nerd turned lifelong energy entrepreneur.”
He is the founder and chief executive of Liberty Energy, a Colorado oilfield services company. He also is on the board of Oklo, an advanced nuclear technology startup company developing micro reactors.
He graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and then did graduate studies and work at MIT and University of California Berkeley in electrical engineering.
“I am all in on energy from my start in nuclear, solar and geothermal to my current efforts in oil and gas and next generation geothermal,” he says on his LinkedIn page. “I don’t care were energy comes, as long as it is secure, reliable, affordable and betters human lives.”
Climate protesters interrupted the Senate Committing hearing several times after Wright previously said in a video posted to LinkedIn that there is no “climate crisis.”
But Wednesday his comments were more moderate as he said that climate change is a real issue.
He said the nation has a historic opportunity to secure its energy systems, deliver leadership in science and technology innovation, steward its weapons stockpile and meet Cold War legacy waste commitments.
Hanford nuclear site cleanup
Wright said he is firmly committed to the nation’s moral obligation to “clean up the mess that was left” in Washington state.
The federal government is spending about $3 billion a year to clean up radioactive and chemical waste and contamination left from producing nearly two thirds of the plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program from World War II through the Cold War.
Cantwell pressed him on whether he would uphold the Department of Energy’s obligation to meet cleanup standards and deadlines in the legally binding Tri-Party Agreement, even as the White House Office of Management and Budget has sometimes pressed to do “cleanup on the cheap.”
As Wright hesitated, Cantwell said he needed to look at the issue and put on the record that he believes in the legal framework.
Washington residents don’t want radioactive waste definitions redefined to allow waste left in leaky underground tanks, she said.
Cantwell also asked about investing in national laboratory work, particularly in the areas of artificial intelligence and quantum technology research and development.
She is among bipartisan senators who in December introduced the National Quantum Initiative to authorize $2.7 billion in federal funding to accelerate quantum research and development at federal science agencies over five years.
Quantum computing has the potential to solve complex problems exponentially faster than existing computers, said supporters of the bill.
Both artificial intelligence and quantum research need a leadership role from the national labs and adequate funding to continue the nation’s national security agenda, she said.
PNNL, Tri-Cities energy hub
“PNNL has done fabulous work in this area,” Wright said.
Cybersecurity is a growing threat, with foreign actors attempting to infiltrate government and industry systems, he said.
Wright also told Cantwell that electric grid resiliency is “the most urgent energy issue we have today.”
In August, PNNL opened the $75 million Grid Storage Launchpad on its Richland campus to advance storing energy in batteries at the electrical grid scale.
The Tri-Cities is a hub for energy innovation both because of the Hanford environmental cleanup, which led to the creation of the national laboratory in Richland, and the natural resources in the area, Cantwell said.
It may be time to think more aggressively about preparing for fusion power generation, Cantwell said. The technology would use heat from nuclear fusion reactions to generate electricity.
Wright agreed that he would like the technology used for commercial power in the next decade.
He called the nation’s 17 national laboratories “magnificent” and said they have been pioneers in energy innovation.
Wright also discussed nuclear power production, saying that the United States should be a leader in the technology or other nations will fill the vacuum.