Portsmouth

Ohio’s U.S. Senate delegation this week formally invited newly minted Energy Secretary Rick Perry to tour the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, Ohio, where the Energy Department is weighing big changes for a uranium cleanup that could take much longer than expected. “We would like to formally invite you to Piketon, Ohio, to see […]

Eight members of Ohio’s delegation to the House of Representatives on Monday urged new Energy Secretary Rick Perry  to visit the department’s uranium enrichment decommissioning project at Portsmouth. This is the latest of several invitations Perry has received from lawmakers to take an up close and personal view of DOE’s cleanup of its Cold War nuclear complex. […]

Eight members of Ohio’s delegation to the House of Representatives on Monday urged new Energy Secretary Rick Perry  to visit the department’s uranium enrichment decommissioning project at Portsmouth. This is the latest of several invitations Perry has received from lawmakers to take an up close and personal view of DOE’s cleanup of its Cold War nuclear complex. […]

The Energy Department could soon revise an Obama administration decision that bartering government-owned uranium to pay for nuclear cleanup at the Portsmouth Site in Piketon, Ohio, does not harm the domestic uranium market, a March 9 regulatory filing shows. “The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is beginning the process to consider a new Secretarial Determination covering potential […]

By Billy Spencer, Mayor, Piketon, Ohio. Scioto County Commissioner Mike Crabtree is misinformed with respect to the Village of Piketon’s long-held position on the cleanup and redevelopment plan for the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant (PORTS) and the need for a third-party independent assessment. He should also know that the Village of Piketon is not alone […]

The commissioner of the Ohio county south of the Energy Department’s Portsmouth Site has taken a local mayor to task for his resistance to the waste disposal facility DOE intends to build at the former uranium enrichment facility. Earlier this month, Mayor Billy Spencer of Piketon, the village of 2,000 adjacent to the Portsmouth cleanup, petitioned DOE to […]

The commissioner of the Ohio county south of the Energy Department’s Portsmouth Site has taken a local mayor to task for his resistance to the waste disposal facility DOE intends to build at the former uranium enrichment facility. Earlier this month, Mayor Billy Spencer of Piketon, the village of 2,000 adjacent to the Portsmouth cleanup, petitioned DOE to […]

Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of quarterly news summaries and analyses about President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office. We’ll check in with one long, big-picture update every 25 days, with a regular flow of updates in between to keep you up on news affecting U.S. nuclear cleanup during the […]

Fluor Corp.’s work at Energy Department nuclear cleanup sites in Kentucky and Ohio has enhanced the company’s reputation at the agency, the construction giant’s chief executive told investors Friday. Remediation of former gaseous diffusion plants at DOE’s Paducah and Portsmouth facilities is “proving us to be one of the DOE’s go-to contractors,” CEO David Seaton said on Fluor’s 2016 […]

The Atkins-led Mid-America Conversion Services joint venture has started work on an Energy Department contract to process depleted uranium hexafluoride left over from Cold War uranium enrichment in Ohio and Kentucky. In late September, DOE awarded Mid-America Conversion Services a five-year, $318 million depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) treatment contract, unseating incumbent BWXT Conversion Services. Fluor […]

Public tours are being offered again this year at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Ohio, the shuttered facility’s cleanup contractor announced Monday. “We are pleased to continue these special tours for the public to get a close-up view of the former uranium enrichment facilities while they are being addressed under the […]

Wary that his village will become known only for the pile of radioactive waste the Energy Department plans to leave behind after it cleans up the nearby Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, the mayor of Piketon, Ohio, is pitching the agency on a plan to reinvent the former uranium enrichment site as a DOE technology hub. […]

The village of Piketon, Ohio, wants more time to respond to the Energy Department’s plan to lease or sell substantially all of the land now occupied by the agency’s Portsmouth Site following cleanup of Cold War-era uranium enrichment facilities there, according to a village resolution dated Feb. 6. The village is seeking a 60-day extension to respond […]

Public tours are being offered again this year at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Ohio, the shuttered facility’s cleanup contractor announced Monday. “We are pleased to continue these special tours for the public to get a close-up view of the former uranium enrichment facilities while they are being addressed under the […]

The Atkins-led Mid-America Conversion Services joint venture has started work on an Energy Department contract to process depleted uranium hexafluoride left over from Cold War uranium enrichment in Ohio and Kentucky. In late September, DOE awarded Mid-America Conversion Services a five-year, $318 million depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) treatment contract, unseating incumbent BWXT Conversion Services. Fluor […]

Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth has pushed back by up to six months the date for rendering the Energy Department’s 60 year-old X-326 uranium enrichment building cold and dark, according to a senior company executive. “[O]ur goal in the X-326 is to be ‘cold & dark’ by the end of this calendar year,” Dennis Carr, Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth’s program director, […]

Decommissioning expert Robert Kury is off the job at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant decontamination and decommissioning project, according to an internal memo from the Energy Department’s prime cleanup contractor at the Piketon, Ohio, site. Kury “has left the Project to attend to personal matters,” Dennis Carr, Portsmouth site director for Fluor-BWXT, wrote in a memo […]

Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of quarterly news summaries and analyses about President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office. We’ll check in with one long, big-picture update every 25 days, with a regular flow of updates in between to keep you up to date on news affecting Department of Energy […]

The mayor of the village of Piketon wants the Energy Department to fund an independent assessment of the nuclear landfill the agency wants to build at the former uranium enrichment site near the small town in southeast Ohio. DOE formally decided to build the proposed 100-acre on-site disposal cell in 2015, saying it was the least […]

The Trump administration will take a hard look at the Energy Department’s budget for legacy nuclear waste cleanup, Energy Secretary-designate Rick Perry said Thursday during his Senate confirmation hearing. “[P]rioritizing the funding and managing that funding in an appropriate way to clean up these waste sites is going to be very, very high on the priority […]

Centrus Energy Corp. plans to ship low-level waste from the decommissioned American Centrifuge uranium enrichment demonstration facility in Piketon, Ohio, to the Nevada National Security Site for disposal beginning in March, company filings with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission show. “Planning and budgeting for the waste shipments by Centrus, the waste disposal contractor and the transportation […]

The mayor of the village of Piketon wants the Energy Department to fund an independent assessment of the nuclear landfill the agency wants to build at the former uranium enrichment site near the small town in southeast Ohio. DOE formally decided to build the proposed 100-acre on-site disposal cell in 2015, saying it was the least […]

The Department of Energy made significant advances in cleaning up the legacy of its Cold War nuclear weapons operations during the eight years of the Obama administration, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said Thursday in his Cabinet Exit Memo. American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding “accelerated the cleanup of contaminated, often hazardous, legacy sites from the […]

The Energy Department may assess civil penalties against contractors that retaliate against whistleblowers within their ranks, under a new agency rule that goes into effect Jan. 26. The agency released a summary of the final rule late last year in the Federal Register. Senate Democrats from Washington state and Oregon, major stakeholders in the cleanup of the […]

In a paperwork move that officially marks the end of an era, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has removed uranium enrichment from the list of activities permitted under Centrus Energy Corp.’s license for the American Centrifuge project in Piketon, Ohio. The order came down just before Christmas in a Dec. 23 letter to Stephen Toelle, Centrus’ […]

BWXT Conversion Services fared well and Restoration Services Inc. fared better, but Fluor Federal Services hit a skid and netted only half of its latest possible award fee, according to a raft of contract scorecards released recently by the Energy Department’s Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office. Restoration Services earned 96 percent of a possible $397,054 award fee […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is still waiting for Centrus Energy to submit a cost and schedule estimate for decommissioning an industrial-scale uranium-enrichment demonstration plant in Piketon, Ohio. “We expect to submit the plan in the coming weeks,” Centrus spokesman Jeremy Derryberry said by email Monday. Centrus, the former United States Enrichment Corp., was to have submitted […]

A government shutdown loomed Friday as some Senate Democrats held hostage a stopgap spending bill to keep the federal government and its Cold War nuclear cleanup work funded through late April. The House passed the so-called continuing resolution Thursday, then adjourned for the week. In the Senate, however, Democratic lawmakers led by Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is still waiting for Centrus Energy to submit a cost and schedule estimate for decommissioning an industrial-scale uranium-enrichment demonstration plant in Piketon, Ohio. “We expect to submit the plan in the coming weeks,” Centrus spokesman Jeremy Derryberry said by email Monday. Centrus, the former United States Enrichment Corp., was to have submitted […]

With the impending ascension of former NASA hand Rex Geveden to the top spot at BWX Technologies, the Lynchburg, Va.-company has set an an outsider from the aerospace business in charge of an effort to grow the company’s legacy nuclear cleanup business with the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management. “We remain strongly committed to […]