Sequestration Cuts Are Here: 2,500 Nuclear Site Workers To Be Furloughed

YAKIMA, Wash. -- Pink slips went out Monday to nearly 250 workers and more than 2,500 others were notified that they face furloughs of several weeks at the nation's most contaminated nuclear site, where cleanup is likely to be slowed because of automatic federal budget cuts.

About 9,000 people work at south-central Washington's Hanford Nuclear Reservation, which produced plutonium for the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal beginning in World War II and through the Cold War.