SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) – Washington’s attorney general on Thursday asked a federal judge to immediately take steps to protect Hanford Nuclear Reservation workers from exposure to chemical vapors.
More than 50 workers have received medical evaluations after reporting exposure to vapors in recent months.
Attorney General Bob Ferguson, along with the watchdog group Hanford Challenge and a labor union, filed motions for a preliminary injunction in federal court in Eastern Washington. The injunction seeks to prevent further harm to Hanford workers by implementing certain protections now, instead of waiting for the outcome of a trial.
The state filed a lawsuit against the federal government over Hanford worker safety last September. Trial is set for next May, but Ferguson says workers cannot wait that long to have a safe workplace.
Hanford for decades made plutonium for nuclear weapons, and the site near Richland in southeastern Washington is now engaged in a massive cleanup of the resulting radioactive wastes.