Government Investigation Acknowleged by Hanford Tank Contractor

A Hanford contractor has admitted the federal government is investigating the company's handling of a waste tank that's been leaking contaminated materials for some time at the Hanford Nuclear site.

According to KING-5 TV, AECOM is a Los Angeles-based company that last year acquired URS, one of the Hanford tank subcontractors. AECOM also owns half of Washington River Protection Solutions - who oversees and manages the tank farms.

Some 177 single and double-shell tanks at the site are filled with varying degrees of contaminated nuclear and chemical waste, sludge and other byproducts of the weapons produced at Hanford. Some of the waste dates back to World War II.

According to information obtained by KING-5 TV via government and other documents:

"Scientific evidence that a million-gallon tank holding radioactive waste was ignored for a year while the contractor continued to spend millions of dollars on a project rendered useless by the very fact that the tank was leaking."

The investigation was made light as part of a quarterly financial report filed by AECOM that was filed last week. The tank in question is the well-known AY-102, which has shown definitive signs of leakage in the space between the inner and outer shells of the double-walled tank. So far, no definite evidence exists that this material has made it's way outside the tank completely, but the leakage is considered serious by officials.