Cleanup crews at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Piketon, Ohio have started tearing down another of the sprawling process buildings once used in uranium enrichment work at the property.
DOE announced Tuesday that demolition is underway at the mammoth X-333 Process Building. It is the second of three massive process buildings being taken down at the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant site, DOE said in a press release.
X-326 was the first such building to come down at Portsmouth. Workers finished tearing down X-326 in 2022. DOE has said it expects to finish tearing down X-333 in 2030. The X-330 would be the third and final such building to come down, a job scheduled to start in 2030.
Less than a decade ago, DOE’s Office of Environmental Management hoped to have all three facilities taken down during the 2020s.
“The largest of the three process buildings at the site, X-333 has 66 acres of floor space under roof and measures 1,456 feet long, 970 feet wide and 82 feet high,” according to the DOE Office of Environmental Management press release. “The building once housed the largest pieces of the site’s enrichment equipment, including converters that weighed as much as 66,000 pounds each.”
Some dismantling work actually started six months ago, when workers started removing exterior panels laden with asbestos.
Debris from the building demolition will be chopped up and disposed of at Portsmouth’s On-Site Waste Disposal Facility.
Amentum-led Southern Ohio Cleanup Co. is in charge of remediation at Portsmouth. Amentum-led Southern Ohio Cleanup Co. is in charge of remediation at Portsmouth. It took over in October from prior environmental contractor Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth.