$2B contract awarded for Piketon nuke plant cleanup

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By Tom Beyerlein  and Lynn Hulsey, Staff Writers Updated 10:29 PM Monday, August 16, 2010

The Energy Department on Monday, Aug. 16, issued a $2 billion contract for the cleanup of radioactive and chemical contamination at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon.

The contract names a partnership of Fluor Federal Services and Babcock and Wilcox Technical Services Group as prime contractor. The project includes decontamination and demolition of three huge buildings used from 1954-2001 to enrich uranium, first for atomic bombs and later for nuclear reactor fuel. It includes a five-year initial phase and a possible five-year extension. Work is to begin later this year, a department spokeswoman said.

The project was expected to take 35 years, but an expedited schedule included in President Obama’s fiscal 2011 budget request seeks completion in 14 years. The request also includes nearly $500 million for the cleanup, which also received $118 million in stimulus funds, said U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, a Senate Appropriations Committee member who has pushed for the expedited cleanup.

Brown’s office said the federal funding will help to create 275 jobs in economically distressed south central Ohio.

Monday’s contract is for twice the amount it cost to clean up the Miamisburg Mound Plant. According to the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, the costliest environmental remediation in Ohio history was the $4.5 billion cleanup of the Feed Materials Production Center in Fernald.

Ultimately, plans call for the reuse of the 3,778-acre federal reservation at Piketon as a “clean energy park.”

USEC Inc. of Bethesda, Md., is seeking $2 billion in federal loan guarantees for its proposed American Centrifuge, which would enrich uranium for reactor fuel using former Energy Department technology that was never deployed. USEC filed a revised application earlier this month, a year after being denied loan guarantees because of concerns about the technology.

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