SEATTLE — For much of the 20th century, a sprawling complex in the desert of southeastern Washington turned out most of the plutonium used in the nation’s nuclear arsenal, from the first atomic bomb to the arms race that fueled the Cold War.

Now, after decades of planning and billions of dollars of investment, liquid nuclear and chemical waste at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation is being turned into a much safer substance: glass.

State regulators on Wednesday issued the final permit needed for workers to remove more waste from often-leaky underground tanks, mix it in a crucible with additives, and heat it above 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The mixture then cools in stainless steel vats and solidifies as glass — still radioactive, but far more stable in storage, and less likely to seep into the soil or the Columbia River nearby.

The long-awaited development is a key step in cleaning up the nation’s most polluted nuclear waste site. Construction of the Hanford Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant began in 2002.

“We are at the precipice of a really significant moment in Hanford’s history,” Casey Sixkiller, director of the Washington State Department of Ecology, said in a video interview.

The roughly 600-square-mile reservation is near the confluence of two of the Pacific Northwest’s most significant rivers, the Columbia and the Snake, in an area important to Native American tribes for millennia.

Wartime planners selected the area because it was isolated and had access to cold water and hydroelectric power. In early 1943, the U.S. government seized the land for a secret project, displacing roughly 2,000 residents, including farmers.

Tens of thousands of workers then responded to newspaper ads around the country promising good jobs to support the Allied effort to defeat Nazi Germany and Japan in World War II, and a new company town arose in the desert.

Most of the workers had no idea they were involved in building the world’s first full-scale plutonium production reactor until the U.S. dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, and President Harry S. Truman announced to the world the existence of the Manhattan Project.

Hanford would grow to include nine nuclear reactors churning out plutonium for the nation’s nuclear arsenal. The last of these was shut down in 1987. Two years later, Washington state, the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reached an agreement for site cleanup.

Seven of the nine reactors have been “cocooned” to prevent contamination from escaping until radiation levels drop enough to allow for the structures to be dismantled, near the end of this century.

There are also 177 giant underground tanks that hold some 56 million gallons of highly radioactive and chemically hazardous waste. Those tanks are well past their projected lifespan of 25 years. More than one-third have leaked in the past, and three are currently leaking.

During Hanford’s years producing plutonium for nuclear weapons, effluent was dumped directly into the Columbia River and into ineffective containment ponds, polluting the surrounding groundwater and contaminating the food chain of wildlife that depends on it, according to a 2013 government assessment.

Now Hanford is focused on cleanup, with an annual budget of around $3 billion.

Encasing radioactive waste in glass — called “vitrification” — has been recognized since at least the 1980s as an effective method for neutralizing it. There are plans for two facilities at Hanford: the one now approved to process low-level nuclear waste, and an adjacent facility (now under construction) to handle high-level waste.

More than $30 billion has been spent on the plants so far. The U.S. Department of Energy, which oversees Hanford, faced an Oct. 15 deadline to convert some of its stored waste into glass, per a cleanup schedule and consent decree involving the EPA and Washington state.

The first waste to be mixed with glass will include pretreated radioactive cesium and strontium, according to a Department of Energy statement.

The department fired Roger Jarrell, its main overseer of the Hanford cleanup, earlier this month, prompting concerns about the Trump administration’s commitment. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington, said Energy Secretary Chris Wright told her by phone that he was looking to stall the vitrification operations.

That prompted outrage from Washington state officials. Gov. Bob Ferguson, joined at a news conference by tribal leaders and labor representatives, threatened legal action.

But Wright insisted the department had changed nothing, and on Sept. 17, a deputy signed paperwork allowing vitrification to proceed following approvals by state regulators.

“Although there are challenges, we are committed to beginning operations by October 15, 2025,” Wright stated last month. “As always, we are prioritizing the health and safety of both the workforce and the community as we work to meet our nation’s need to safely and efficiently dispose of nuclear waste.”

On Wednesday, with state approval issued, Ferguson urged the Energy Department to follow through.

“Our state has done our part to start up the Waste Treatment Plant,” Ferguson stated. “Now the federal government needs to live up to its responsibilities and clean up what they left behind.”

In a statement issued ahead of the government shutdown, the Department of Energy said it would be able to continue all its operations for one to five days. After that, the department’s work will cease unless operations are “related to the safety of human life and the protection of property.”

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