The hose ruptured just after 2 a.m. in July at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, spilling 85 gallons of radioactive waste being pumped from a decaying underground tank. It wasn’t until 9:45 a.m. — more than seven hours later — that workers even realized that a spill had occurred.

They could not have imagined that such a relatively small spill — a result of shoddy planning and inadequate equipment testing — would have such large repercussions. It brought to a halt millions of dollars of cleanup activities that are yet to resume, crippling the pace of an already sluggish project.

Nor could they have realized the danger that they had put themselves in. Workers noticed a bad smell and soon began complaining of symptoms. Ultimately, two dozen workers sought medical care for irritated eyes and breathing, coughing episodes to the point of vomiting, nausea and a sensation of burning skin.

The spill was just one more worrisome chapter in a long book of cleanup woes at Hanford, but the episode is emblematic of the tangle that the cleanup has become, marked by acrimony, finger-pointing and threats of lawsuits. Some of the delays can be rightly blamed on too little funding, but other setbacks are the fault of poor management, failed equipment, engineering miscalculations, subpar work and injuries.

For some, the mounting troubles raise a fearsome possibility: Will the federal government decide to erect a fence around Hanford and simply walk away from the most polluted nuclear site in the nation?

“This is a really, really big story,” said Jay Manning, director of the state Ecology Department. “Can we as a society clean up a site like Hanford? Do we have the will, do we have the technology?”

Sen. Maria Cantwell and Gov. Chris Gregoire raised the same worries in an op-ed essay this month in The Washington Post, asking: “Will America keep its promises and clean up this toxic legacy? Will our nation and Congress allow the administration to turn its back on millions of Americans?”

Managers at the U.S. Energy Department, which is responsible for the cleanup, are adamant that they’ve learned from past mistakes and are proud of the progress that has been made. They bristle at attacks on their commitment and ability to get the job done.

But the fact is that in 1989, the department promised to finish the job in 30 years. Today, the cleanup isn’t even halfway there, and the timetable’s shot.

State regulators are so fed up with the slow progress, broken promises and mounting risk to people and the environment that they’re on the brink of suing the federal government. That threat, however, apparently struck little fear in the Bush administration, which proposed slashing Hanford’s cleanup budget for next year by $600 million — about a one-third reduction.

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