For more than 50 years, the Hanford complex in southeastern Washington produced plutonium for nuclear weapons. Now the 586-square miles are being cleaned up at a cost of $2 billion a year and involving some 11,000 workers. The project, with 177 underground tanks holding 53 million gallons of radioactive water and more than 270 billion gallons of contaminated groundwater, has been made "more daunting with an accelerated timetable that slashed cleanup projections to 35 years from 70," write Sarah Kershaw and Matthew Wald. "The quicker pace has led to charges among some doctors, experts and lawmakers that speed has priority over worker health and safety." An advocacy group says the Department of Energy and on-site contractors ignore some risks associated with the cleanup. Federal energy officials and Hanford cleanup contractors say "they have made every effort to protect the workers, asserting that the new timetable did not result in hazardous conditions." Doctors associated with the project say the "project brings workers into closer contact with hazardous materials used to make bombs, like beryllium, a metal with various uses that can cause incurable lung disease if particles are inhaled." Twenty-one workers have been diagnosed with chronic beryllium disease, and 84 more are said to be at high risk of contracting it. A beryllium disease prevention program instituted by the Energy in the late nineties requires contractors to identify places where beryllium may be present and notify employees, but they acknowledge that they are still identifying buildings were workers could come in contact with the metal.