A long-running fight between state and federal agencies over Hanford's chemical and transuranic wastes has been mostly resolved, they announced Friday.

Washington's Department of Ecology, the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said they tentatively agreed Thursday to set legally binding schedules for cleaning up a major portion of Hanford's transuranic and chemical wastes.

The agreement, which covers contaminated junk buried or stored above ground in barrels, untangles a knot of lawsuits, administrative orders, a threat to stop much of Hanford's cleanup work and arguments over which agency has the greater legal clout.

"It really represents a major breakthrough," said Keith Klein, DOE's Hanford manager.

The state and DOE agreed to let a federal court resolve one major issue - the storage standards for chemical-laced transuranic wastes awaiting shipment to New Mexico.

DOE and the state agreed to speed up resolution of that and hope to have a court decision by next spring. Until then, DOE cannot ship transuranic wastes into Hanford for temporary storage.

The entire issue flared up about a year ago when the state and DOE began talks over adding Hanford's transuranic wastes to the Tri-Party Agreement, the legal pact governing Hanford cleanup.

Those wastes are highly radioactive junk that retains its radioactivity for thousands to millions of years. The wastes are supposed to be packed to specific standards and eventually shipped to underground storage near Carlsbad, N.M.

Hanford has about 84,000 55-gallon barrels of those wastes, most of it buried. DOE's master plan is to send those wastes from its small sites to Hanford to be checked and repacked for shipment to New Mexico.

The state wanted the Tri-Party Agreement to cover those wastes, which would give it legal control over their processing and removal. DOE insisted the state had no legal standing to control those wastes.

Their fight threatened at one point to shut down much of cleanup work at Hanford and while both sides went to court. The result, after a truce and five more months of negotiations, was Friday's announcement.

This "is proof that contentious issues can be resolved if communications lines remain open and all parties work together toward shared cleanup goals," said U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash.

The two sides plan to brief the Hanford Advisory Board and Mid-Columbia tribes on the tentative agreement and take public comment before taking any formal action.

The main terms are:

* No outside transuranic wastes will be shipped to Hanford until the remaining federal lawsuit is resolved.

The state wants Hanford to repack relatively quickly all those wastes so the barrels either meet the New Mexico site's acceptance standards or Washington's requirements to prevent leaks.

DOE does not want any quick deadlines for repacking Hanford's barrels to either standard. Instead, DOE wants the flexibility to repack them at any time during their stay at Hanford.

* By Nov. 15, DOE is to begin removing suspected transuranic waste barrels from central Hanford's low-level radioactive waste burial grounds.

* By December 2009, all current barrels of Hanford's chemical-laced, low-level radioactive wastes must be checked, drained of fluids and repacked.

* By 2010, all transuranic wastes that can be handled by people in protective suits must be removed from Hanford burial grounds.

* DOE is to begin removing by 2011 Hanford transuranic wastes that are so radioactive that they require remote-control handling.

* By 2012, DOE must be able to check, drain fluids and repack barrels of the remote-handled wastes that include dangerous chemicals.

* By 2018, all remote-handled wastes must be removed from the ground.

* DOE has annual targets of volumes of waste that must be removed and treated, which the state can enforce.