The Senate version of the national economic recovery package includes $6.4 billion to be spent at Hanford and other nuclear weapons cleanup sites, thanks to the efforts of Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.

"I fought for this funding in the economic recovery package because it will put workers in the Tri-Cities back on the job and help clean up Hanford," Murray said in a statement. She worked for the money as a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee and a member of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development.

However, the House version of the economic recovery package includes far less for cleanup work, $500 million. The House bill already has been considered by the House Appropriations Committee.

After the packages pass the full House or Senate, the two amounts will have to be reconciled by a conference committee.

The bills do not allocate the money to specific sites. That would be left to the Department of Energy.

But Murray's staff said work that could be paid for at Hanford includes speeding up cleanup of the 210 square miles of Hanford along the Columbia River, earlier completion of work at the K East Reactor and the use of more technologies to prevent contamination in Hanford soil and ground water from reaching the Columbia River.

The $6.4 billion appropriation in the two-year Senate bill is close to one DOE proposal to spend $6 billion over four years to reduce the contaminated footprint of DOE sites nationwide, from 900 square miles to 135 square miles by 2015 or earlier.

At Hanford, DOE officials have planned for several years to reduce the contaminated portion of the site to about 75 square miles in central Hanford by 2015.

"Our government has a legal and moral obligation to clean up nuclear waste and at a time when our economy is struggling we also have a commitment to put people back to work," Murray said.

Investing heavily in cleanup should mean jobs for recently laid-off workers at Hanford and new jobs, her staff said.

Spending $6 billion in addition to annual appropriations for cleanup would create thousands of new blue collar jobs within 90 to 180 days, the DOE proposal said. Longer term, it could create 10,000 jobs for four years, it said.

The DOE proposal called for cleanup to focus on decontamination and demolition of excess contaminated facilities, soil and ground water remediation, and solid waste disposition, all of which have proven technologies for the work.

That would allow DOE to then turn its attention to tougher problems, including disposing of the high-level radioactive waste now stored in underground tanks at Hanford and other sites, the report said.

Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., also pushed for the Senate bill to include a major boost for Hanford cleanup. She signed a bipartisan letter to the leaders of the Senate Appropriations Committee asking that the economic stimulus bill include $6 billion for cleanup.