FILE - In this May 11, 2015, file photo, nuclear waste is stored in underground containers at the Idaho Nation. A small amount of radioactive, weapons-grade plutonium about the size of a U.S. quarter... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this May 11, 2015, file photo, nuclear waste is stored in underground containers at the Idaho Nation. A small amount of radioactive, weapons-grade plutonium about the size of a U.S. quarter... (Associated Press) 
 
 BOISE, Idaho (AP) — A small amount of radioactive, weapons-grade plutonium about the size of a U.S. quarter is missing from an Idaho university that was using it for research, leading federal officials on Friday to propose an $8,500 fine. 
 
 The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Idaho State University can't account for about a 30th of an ounce (1 gram) of the material that's used in nuclear reactors and to make nuclear bombs. 
 
 The amount is too small to make a nuclear bomb, agency spokesman Victor Dricks said, but could be used to make a dirty bomb to spread radioactive contamination. 
 
 "The NRC has very rigorous controls for the use and storage of radioactive materials as evidenced by this enforcement action," he said of the proposed fine for failing to keep track of the material. 
 
 Dr. Cornelis Van der Schyf, vice president for research at the university, blamed partially completed paperwork from 15 years ago as the school tried to dispose of the plutonium. 
 
 "Unfortunately, because there was a lack of sufficient historical records to demonstrate the disposal pathway employed in 2003, the source in question had to be listed as missing," he said in a statement to The Associated Press. "The radioactive source in question poses no direct health issue or risk to public safety." 
 
 Idaho State University has a nuclear engineering program and works with the U.S. Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory, considered the nation's primary nuclear research lab and located about 65 miles (105 kilometers) northwest of the school. 
 
 The plutonium was being used to develop ways to ensure nuclear waste containers weren't leaking and to find ways to detect radioactive material being illegally brought into the U.S. following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the school said in an email to the AP. 
 
 The university, which has 30 days to dispute the proposed fine, reported the plutonium missing on Oct. 13, according to documents released by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The agency said a school employee doing a routine inventory discovered the university could only account for 13 of its 14 plutonium sources, each weighing about the same small amount. 
 
 The school searched documents and found records from 2003 and 2004 saying the material was on campus and awaiting disposal. However, there were no documents saying the plutonium had been properly disposed. 
 
 The last document mentioning the plutonium is dated Nov. 23, 2003. It said the Idaho National Laboratory didn't want the plutonium and the school's technical safety office had it "pending disposal of the next waste shipment." 
 
 The school also reviewed documents on waste barrels there and others transferred off campus since 2003, and opened and examined some of them. Finally, officials searched the campus but didn't find the plutonium. 
 
 The nuclear commission said senior university officials planned to return the school's remaining plutonium to the Energy Department. It's not clear if that has happened. 
 
 Energy Department officials didn't return calls seeking comment Friday. 
 
 Dricks, the commission spokesman, said returning the plutonium was part of the school's plan to reduce its inventory of radioactive material. 
 
 He said overall it has "a good record with the NRC." 
 
 ___ 
 
 This story has been corrected to show that the missing plutonium is about a 30th of an ounce, not a third of an ounce. ||||| (CNN) Idaho State University has been fined after it lost track of a small amount of plutonium 239, a substance used to make nuclear weapons. 
 
 University Officials say the sample, missing since 2003, does not pose a direct health issue or risk to public safety. The substance had been used by the school to conduct several research experiments. 
 
 The school realized it had lost track of the plutonium earlier this year and immediately notified the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. ISU officials said the sample, weighing a gram, was lost as it was being taken out of service after employees only partially filled out the necessary paperwork. 
 
 Although the ISU believes the tiny speck of plutonium was transferred to a licensed disposal facility, there are no records to prove that it was. 
 
 The commission fined the university $8,500 for the lost plutonium. 
 
 Read More ||||| HANFORD – Thousands of Hanford workers streamed out of the Washington nuclear reservation Tuesday while operators huddled to find a fix for a gaping hole in the roof of a tunnel that entombs rail cars full of radioactive equipment. 
 
 State and federal officials sought to ease fears of a leak of radioactive material, saying monitoring at the site shows no evidence of a release. 
 
 “The incident is moving from the emergency phase towards the recovery phase,” the Department of Energy said Tuesday evening. “The workforce has safely left the site, other than personnel essential to the recovery plan.” 
 
 Energy Secretary Rick Perry received briefings on the situation throughout Tuesday, his office said. After extensive testing at the site, “there has been no indication of worker exposure or an airborne radiological release,” Perry’s office said. 
 
 Workers discovered the hole in the tunnel next to a closed facility known as the PUREX plant, short for Plutonium Uranium Extraction, near the center of Hanford. The radioactive waste contained in the tunnel is a byproduct of the nation’s effort to develop enough plutonium to fuel nuclear weapons from World War II through the Cold War. 
 
 “Emergency responders are out there to make sure the site remains secure,” said Destry Henderson, spokesman for the Hanford Site Emergency Operation Center. “Folks are meeting to develop a recovery plan.” 
 
 But exactly how the hole, estimated at 400 square feet, will be plugged or covered – and how long that will take – remained unclear Tuesday. Officials said they are exploring placing a barrier between the contaminated equipment inside and the outside air without causing the hole to grow bigger. 
 
 “Certainly the cleanup includes technical challenges and hazards,” Henderson said. “Sometimes you run into unexpected situations like this and our employees are figuring out a path forward to deal with it.” 
 
 No workers were injured Tuesday, said Randy Bradbury, a spokesman for the Washington state Department of Ecology. As a precaution, nearby employees were evacuated and private pilots told not to fly over the sprawling reservation, which is half the size of Rhode Island and located 124 miles southwest of Spokane. 
 
 Workers near PUREX noticed the cave-in during routine monitoring, and the Hanford emergency center was activated at 8:26 a.m. There were no workers inside the tunnel when it collapsed. But nearby workers were evacuated as a precaution, the Department of Energy said. 
 
 Employees close to the PUREX plant were first advised to take shelter indoors, and that was expanded to cover several thousand employees within Hanford’s security boundary. By noon most workers were told to leave work early as a precaution. 
 
 By early afternoon cars were streaming out along the two-lane highway leading away from Hanford’s Vitrification Plant, a facility under construction that will turn liquid radioactive waste into glass chunks. 
 
 Hanford Patrol officers, who barred any filming of their officers or car under penalty of arrest, stopped vehicles from approaching at least five miles from the site of the tunnel collapse well within the 580-square mile reservation. 
 
 One contractor, who said he could not give his name, said he was forced to park and wait more than three hours after the emergency was declared. He eventually was allowed to pass through a checkpoint at 2:45 p.m. 
 
 Several other vans containing Radiological Control officers passed the same checkpoint. Those employees used hand-held detection devices which showed no contamination had been released from the tunnel, Henderson said. Closer to the collapse site, crews used a remote-operated device to monitor for possible radiological releases and take video footage of the hole. 
 
 “The fundamental goal is employee safety,” Henderson said. Hanford has more than 9,000 employees. “We need to find out what happened, why it happened and mitigate the problem. Today our response was a precaution as we were determining the extent of the potential hazard.” 
 
 Around 1:35 p.m. the last of the employees in the vicinity of the tunnel was released from work early. Non-essential employees were released from work early or told not to report to work for swing shifts Tuesday night. 
 
 Workers considered essential for site operations were told to avoid the emergency area, which is 19 miles from North Richland and about 7 miles from the Columbia River. 
 
 The cave-in occurred where two tunnels – one about 360 feet long and the other about 1,700 feet long – join together east of the PUREX plant. They were built during the Cold War to store contaminated equipment from plutonium production operations at the plant. 
 
 An unnamed source told NBC affiliate KING that crews doing road work may have created a vibration that caused part of the tunnel to collapse. Henderson said he was not able to confirm that. 
 
 “A serious situation’ 
 
 Gov. Jay Inslee was notified about the tunnel breach by the Energy Department and the White House on Tuesday morning. Inslee called the event “a serious situation.” 
 
 “Federal, state and local officials are coordinating closely on the response,” Inslee said, with the state Ecology Department in close communication with the Energy Department. 
 
 There were no plans for Inslee, who made several previously planned stops in Skamania County on Tuesday, to go to Hanford, his staff said. 
 
 Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell said they were monitoring the situation closely and that safety should be the top priority. 
 
 “The initial reports are no one has been hurt but we are watching this very closely,” Murray said. 
 
 Cantwell said the Energy Department and its contractors need to find out whether the subsidence in the tunnels has resulted in an environmental contamination. 
 
 Hanford’s nuclear legacy Hanford played a key role in the top-secret Manhattan Project, the race by the United States and its allies during World War II to produce an atomic bomb before the Germans. Here’s a look at key locations at Hanford, including locations where efforts have been underway for years to clean up the 586-square-mile site’s radioactive and chemical wastes. | MAP » 
 
 “My thoughts are with the first responders who are working to assess the situation on the ground, monitor any environmental impacts and design next steps for securing the area,” she said. 
 
 The state and the federal government have been locked in years of litigation over cleanup of nuclear waste at Hanford that is a legacy of the nation’s weapons programs from World War II and the Cold War. 
 
 State Rep. Gerry Pollet, a Seattle Democrat who serves as director for Hanford cleanup watchdog group Heart of America Northwest, said the fact that a tunnel collapse or other radiation leak from the PUREX site hasn’t happened sooner is “just luck.” 
 
 “This disaster was predicted and shows the federal Energy Department’s utter recklessness in seeking decades of delay for Hanford Cleanup, and Washington State’s and EPA’s dereliction in agreeing to those delays,” Pollet said in a press release. 
 
 Walls held up by timbers 
 
 Hanford was built during World War II and made the plutonium for most of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, including the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, at the end of the war. 
 
 The closed PUREX plant was used to chemically process irradiated fuel rods to remove plutonium for weapons. It was built in the 1950s and operated from 1956 to 1972 and again from 1983 to 1990. 
 
 PUREX plant dumping ground For decades during the Cold War arms race, nuclear waste was dumped at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation’s sprawling 200 East and 200 West areas. The PUREX plant, a massive concrete bunker the length of three football fields that chemically extracted plutonium from nuclear fuel rods, is in the 200 East area. It was built in 1955 and closed in 1990. | READ MORE » 
 
 Henderson said the tunnel in question was about 360 feet long and contained eight flatbed rail cars built in the 1950s and 1960s full of highly contaminated materials and equipment from the plant were backed into the waste disposal tunnels at the plant and left there as a disposal method. 
 
 The flatbed train cars “were built to hold contaminated material that were large pieces of former plutonium processing equipment that were too large to be stored elsewhere,” Henderson said. 
 
 Last year, a new legal deadline was set requiring the Department of Energy to start some work toward assessing the waste disposal tunnels by September 2017. 
 
 But Henderson said he checked and found no active plans to deal with the tunnels. “The focus of the facility was to just monitor in place,” he said. 
 
 Hanford has the nation’s largest depository of radioactive defense waste needing clean up. The site contains about 56 million gallons of radioactive waste, most of it in 177 underground tanks. 
 
 Although the Trump administration has vowed to slash the budgets of most Energy Department programs, the administration does not plan to skimp on the department’s program charged with the Hanford cleanup and with other nuclear sites. It has requested $6.5 billion for agency’s environmental management program for 2018. 
 
 This report contains information from Spokesman-Review reporters Thomas Clouse, Jim Camden and Becky Kramer, as well as The Tri-City Herald and Washington Post.
– A university has admitted to misplacing a gram of weapons-grade plutonium, and federal authorities want to fine them $8,500. Per CNN, Idaho State University has not been able to account for the bit of radioactive material since 2003 but, nonetheless, believes it was properly stored at a licensed disposal facility. However, with no documented proof, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Friday it must propose the fine. Dr. Cornelis Van der Schyf, vice president for research at the university, blamed partially completed paperwork from 15 years ago as the school tried to dispose of the plutonium. "Unfortunately, because there was a lack of sufficient historical records to demonstrate the disposal pathway employed in 2003, the source in question had to be listed as missing," he said in a statement to the AP. The statement said the plutonium "poses no direct health issue or risk to public safety." The plutonium was being used to develop ways to ensure nuclear waste containers weren't leaking and to find ways to detect radioactive material being illegally brought into the US following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. While the missing amount could not be used to make a nuclear bomb, it could be used to create a so-called dirty bomb to spread nuclear contamination. The university, which has 30 days to dispute the proposed fine, reported the plutonium missing on Oct. 13, according to documents released by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The agency said a school employee doing a routine inventory discovered the university could only account for 13 of its 14 plutonium sources, each weighing about the same small amount.