Shirley Hankins and Wanda Munn say they've got their tennis shoes on and are ready for a campaign to restart Hanford's dormant nuclear test reactor.

The sneakers refer to Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who successfully campaigned her way to a U.S. Senate seat as the "mom in tennis shoes."

State Rep. Hankins, R-Richland, and Munn, a former Richland city councilwoman, want the same success in trying to get Murray and Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., to join them in a campaign called "Woman to Woman."

Organized labor, businesses, farmers, local politicians, doctors, scientists and cancer patients have failed to get the senators to restart the reactor, they said. Maybe women can make a difference.

"We have never lost any of the technical wars with respect to the Fast Flux Test Facility," Munn said. "The challenge we have is a political one. We've known that from the start.

"I'm here to tell you, woman to woman and woman to man, we're not going to go away. There is no quit in our minds. The future of the Fast Flux Test Facility is the future of this community."

Advocates believe the reactor has several missions, including providing medical isotopes to be used to fight cancer and as a test platform for the next generation of nuclear reactors.

Munn said elected female politicians and leaders in the community are planning to caravan to Olympia in early November to save the reactor. And there is a chance they'll try to make a trip to Washington, D.C.

Other female politicians on board and attending a news conference Thursday at the offices of Citizens for Medical Isotopes included Richland's Carol Moser and Franklin County's Sue Miller. Also in attendance was Sandy Matheson, Tri-Citian of the Year.

However, Department of Energy contractors continue work on the deactivation and decommissioning of the reactor. DOE is hoping to award next year a contract worth about $500 million to completely shut down the reactor by 2012.

FFTF advocates are working against an unknown deadline, tentatively Thanksgiving, but that could come as quickly as the next cold weather front. The cold weather, specifically the damage it could do to the reactor's drained, outer coolant loops, could make a restart difficult and cost prohibitive.

Munn said the priority for advocates is to get DOE to turn on heaters to protect the loops.

It's why they need the senators, Munn said. "We can't get there without the senators."

But they are unlikely to get that support.

Charla Neuman, a spokeswoman for Cantwell, said the senator's position hasn't changed and that is that it's up to the Secretary of Energy to decide to restart FFTF.

However, she said she would reconsider the position if FFTF supporters had new information.

Murray's position also isn't likely to change, said spokesman Todd Webster.

"The Bush administration has made the decision to decommission the FFTF," Webster said. "It's hard to imagine that any man, woman, vegetable or mineral could get them to change their minds."

FFTF supporters want the two senators, Gov. Gary Locke and U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., to request the Department of Energy to: protect the drained loops; plan a meeting with DOE, the Department of Health and Human Services, White House representatives, community representatives and others to discuss and define FFTF's missions; and complete a court-ordered environmental impact study on the decommissioning of the reactor.