WASHINGTON - Just now is it starting to dawn on the rest of Washington state that the Department of Energy is eyeing Hanford for more than cleanup work.

While there is no plan to reopen the bomb factories of the Cold War, the department is considering whether to take a serious look at using an experimental reactor, the Fast Flux Test Facility (FFTF), to produce the radioactive gas tritium. Tritium is used to boost the power of nuclear weapons, and FFTF could be used to supply it on a temporary basis until a permanent tritium reactor is built - probably in South Carolina.

The department also announced last week that Hanford could play a role in dismantling nuclear weapons as required in treaties with the Russians and destroying the surplus plutonium, including the 11 metric tons currently stored at the reservation. After 50 years of producing the key ingredient for the nation's atomic weapons and the most lethal substance on earth, Hanford could be in the business of trying to stuff the nuclear genie back in the bottle.

Despite disingenuous claims, including one from Gov. Mike Lowry, none of this has been kept a secret by DOE and much of it has been discussed openly over the past several years.

Hanford's days as a defense production site effectively ended when the last of its nine plutonium-producing reactors, the N Reactor, was shut down in the late 1980s. Oversight for the reservation was turned over to the department's office of environmental restoration and waste management.

Well over $1 billion is being spent every year to clean up the toxic waste, which is the legacy of a half-century of weapons production.

Though some estimates ranged above $100 billion, the department now says it will cost just over $50 billion and take at least 30 years to restore the site. But with the department's cleanup budget of about $6 billion annually, an attractive target for a deficit-conscious Congress, there remains the possibility the federal government could just put up a chain-link fence and walk away.

Much of the pressure to find new opportunities at Hanford has come from the Tri-Cities business community. While Westsiders have paid little attention and assumed cleaning up Hanford was the only mission, that isn't the case.

There have been a string of proposals aimed at keeping the FFTF open and preserving up to 1,000 jobs at a time when employment at Hanford already has been or is scheduled to be cut by more than a third from a high of about 18,000.

FFTF was built as part of the country's ill-fated breeder reactor program. Even after the breeder reactor program was canceled, there was enough work to keep FFTF operating, including tests for the Japanese breeder program.

Eventually, though, the reactor was shut down in December 1993, and the liquid sodium coolant was supposed to have been removed in 1995. Once the sodium is removed, the reactor can never be restarted. FFTF seems to have more lives than a cat and the coolant has yet to be removed.

The latest plan calls for using the reactor to produce medical isotopes, which can be used for diagnostic procedures and radiation treatments. While that business may eventually be worth billions of dollars, today it would bring in about $3 million. The cost of operating the reactor is about $60 million annually.

Despite Lowry's claims to the contrary, it's always been clear the way to keep FFTF open was to use it for tritium and, perhaps, to burn some of the nation's surplus plutonium. That would keep it open until the medical isotope program took off.

While Lowry and such groups as Heart of America Northwest may oppose using FFTF to produce tritium, the real opposition comes from the South Carolina congressional delegation, which wants a new tritium-producing reactor built at Savannah River.

Leading the South Carolina delegation are Republican Sen. Strom Thurmond and Republican Rep. Floyd Spence. Thurmond is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and Spence the chairman of the House National Security Committee, the two committees with jurisdiction over Energy Department defense production programs.

"Mr. Thurmond and Mr. Spence are key players and Washington state doesn't even have anyone at the table," said one observer, pointing out that Rep. Doc Hastings, whose district includes Hanford, just resigned from the House National Security Committee to get on the Rules Committee.

The South Carolinians will also have a huge say in how the country's plutonium stockpile will be reduced, though some of the defense hawks on Capitol Hill may consider such an effort premature.

"This may be far from a done deal," said one congressional aide.

The Energy Department has outlined a dual-track approach to do away with the plutonium -burning it in commercial nuclear reactors or processing it in a vitrification plant and turning it into glass. Either option could be carried out at Hanford.

A $500 million, state-of-the-art fuel fabrication facility which has never been used is located adjacent to FFTF and could be used to turn the plutonium into a mixed oxide fuel capable of being burned in a commercial reactor. The facility meets all federal standards and if everything was equal, it would be the logical choice.

The Washington Public Power Supply System has for more than a year expressed an interest in burning plutonium at its No. 2 site.

FFTF could also be used to burn plutonium, though it is smaller than the Supply System plant and wouldn't produce electricity at the same time.

If the department pursued the vitrification option, it could piggy-back onto the plant already planned at Hanford to turn highly radioactive waste stored in underground tanks into glass-like logs. Some of the underground tanks leak and disposing of the waste is the department's toughest and most dangerous cleanup problem.

The department also is considering building a plant at Hanford which would disassemble the plutonium pits that make up the core of a nuclear bomb.

Though other sites could be used for some of the work, Hanford and Savannah River seem to be the most likely choices. With its powerful congressional delegation and lack of opposition within the state, South Carolina probably has the edge.