Fairmont vs. Mt. Notre Dame
Miami Valley styles
'Tis the Season Festival
First of three parts
Taxpayers, former workers pay the price for nuclear plant mess
Sunday, November 12, 2006
PIKETON — It was a place defined by Cold War secrecy.
For nearly five decades the government quietly enriched uranium at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant near Piketon, first for bombs, then nuclear reactors.
Extras
It stood as a proud monument to Ohio's nuclear legacy.
Today that legacy isn't so pretty. The plant is in the midst of a multi-billion dollar environmental cleanup, perhaps the most expensive in Ohio history.
It left behind untold numbers of sick workers, some of them dying before they receive compensation for their occupational illnesses.
The government blames the plant's problems on decades of lax safety practices, accidental toxic releases and routine mishandling of chemical and radioactive material.
The result: poisoned groundwater, hazardous landfills, contaminated buildings.
And a huge cleanup bill for taxpayers.
"They made a big mess there," said Ken Dewey, assistant chief of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency's southeast office. "If they'd been doing things right, they wouldn't have made that mess."
