nuclear-news

Danger to workers and community at Honeywell uranium enrichment facility

This is a uranium enrichment facility from which even the slightest leak of UF6 could wipe out the entire town.

Nuclear Regulators Prohibit Honeywell to Resume Production at Facility With Locked-Out Workets, THE HUFFINGTON POST Mike Elk. 2 Sept 10 “…………The Metropolis facility is the only conversion facility in the world that can distill uranium. While the scab workers Honeywell brought in from Louisiana have worked in nuclear facilities, they haven’t worked on the process that converts uranium from the somewhat toxic UF4 solid state to the extraordinarily more lethal liquid UF6. For the process of converting uranium to UF6, Honeywell is hoping to use its managers who used to work on these processes years ago according to local workers. In addition to not having worked these jobs in years and, as a result, being generally unfamiliar with them, the managers are liable to be especially unprepared to deal with the conversion plant’s control system, which has been altered dramatically in the last few years claims union official John Paul Smith.

Currently, the workers running the plant are unfamiliar with the system they are using and unfamiliar with the processes. This is a uranium enrichment facility from which even the slightest leak of UF6 could wipe out the entire town.

For this reason, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has not allowed the plant to resume production of UF6 according to local community and union sources. Local community and union officials claim that Honeywell is currently using all the political connections it can to force the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to re-open it.

Honeywell originally said they would start up production of the deadly UF6 on Wednesday, however, Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspectors would not allow it. The Nuclear Regulatory Inspectors informed local community and union officials that they would not allow it because on Aug. 25 a round of urine tests on workers showed an unusually high amount of uranium in workers’ urine.

The workers were not permitted to return to working with the uranium. Neither the Nuclear Regulatory Commission or Honeywell could be reached for comment to confirm the claims of local community members and union officials….Mike Elk: Nuclear Regulators Prohibit Honeywell to Resume Production at Facility With Locked-Out Workers

September 3, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | health, Uranium, USA | antinuclear, enriched, nuclear, nuclear costs, nuclear secrecy, nuclear technology, radiation, radioactive, uranium