nuclear-news

U.S. taxpayers fork out for commercial nuclear radioactivity cleanup

USEC now is an investor-owned corporation and has consolidated its enrichment operations at a facility in Paducah, Ky…….

The department rejected a previous request for a loan guarantee in 2009.

Separately, Duke Energy Corp. and Areva SA in mid-2009 announced tentative plans for a 1,650-megawatt nuclear power plant on the Piketon campus. That project remains unscheduled pending site review and exploration of potential federal government financial assistance.

Piketon plant to get $2.1 billion for cleanup work – Business First of Columbus, August 18, 2010, Environmental cleanup of a former uranium processing plant in south-central Ohio will get a boost under a $2.1 billion, 10-year contract the U.S. Department of Energy awarded on Aug. 16.

A joint venture between Texas-based Fluor Federal Services Inc. and North Carolina-based Babcock & Wilcox Technical Services Group Inc. will take over the next phase of the environmental remediation of the government-owned complex that calls for the decontamination and decommissioning of three processing buildings at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon.

The facility opened in 1956 to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. Its mission switched to producing fuel for use in commercial nuclear power plants in the 1960s…….

But the new contract marks the first effort to actually decontaminate the Cold War-era facilities on more than 30 acres of the 3,778-acre campus. The contract also will involve cleaning up contaminated soil and groundwater.

U.S. Department of Energy spokeswoman Loretta Averna said about 2,600 workers have worked at the plant under a current USEC Inc. cleanup contract. In the early 1990s, USEC was created as a government corporation in order to restructure the government’s uranium enrichment operation and prepare it for sale to the private sector.

USEC now is an investor-owned corporation and has consolidated its enrichment operations at a facility in Paducah, Ky…….

The department rejected a previous request for a loan guarantee in 2009.

Separately, Duke Energy Corp. and Areva SA in mid-2009 announced tentative plans for a 1,650-megawatt nuclear power plant on the Piketon campus. That project remains unscheduled pending site review and exploration of potential federal government financial assistance.

Piketon plant to get $2.1 billion for cleanup work – Business First of Columbus

August 19, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, USA | antinuclear, enriched, nuclear, nuclear costs, radiation, radioactive, reactor, uranium