Hello, I am Nicole Nelson-Jean, Associate Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary
for Field Operations at the Department of Energy's Office of Environmental Management.
As the largest environmental cleanup program in the world, the Department of Energy's Office of
Environmental Management, or EM, is responsible for safely completing cleanup resulting from
decades of nuclear weapons development and government-sponsored nuclear energy research.
First established in 1989, EM has been responsible for the cleanup of 107 sites in 35 states.
Today, 16 sites remain, including the former Portsmouth gaseous diffusion site. Construction
of the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant began in late 1952 with a mission to
increase the national production of enriched uranium. The facility became operational in March
1956 enriching uranium for both national security and commercial uses. In the 1960s, the site took
on a more commercial focus enriching uranium mainly for nuclear power plants. And in 1993,
the DOE leased the production facilities to the United States Enrichment Corporation,
USEC, now Centrist Energy Corporation, to restructure and transition the government's
uranium enrichment operations for nuclear power plants to the private sector.
The decision was made in 2000 to terminate uranium enrichment production at the Portsmouth Site with
activities concluding in May 2001. Over 60 years of waste generated from the site activities
resulted in soil and groundwater contamination. Today, DOE oversees environmental cleanup
activities at the site, including environmental management, waste management, depleted uranium,
hexafluoride conversion, and decontamination and demolition. The Portsmouth Site has become
an economic driver in the community. It all started in 1952 with the Plant's construction.
Today it's a place for a site cleanup. The Department and its contractors employ more than
2,000 people in the surrounding region. The most recent economic impact formulas suggest
the Department's operations have an annual impact of over $700 million to the State of Ohio.
Since 2010, DOE contractors at the site have provided over $4 million in economic
development grants, and directly purchased over $500 million in goods and services
from small and medium-sized businesses in Jackson, Pike, Ross, and Scioto Counties.
After decades of successful remediation of contaminated soil and groundwater at the site,
today’s EM cleanup mission focuses on the deactivation and demolition.
Over 400 uranium enrichment facilities, as well as final remediation actions, will be addressed.
In 2010, the Department of Energy began an extensive planning and preparation effort
for the deactivation and demolition of the three main process buildings at the site. The process
buildings have a combined length of approximately one and a half miles, and cover roughly 93 acres
at the site. The first significant skyline change at the site began in 2021 with the initiation
of demolition of the x-326 Process Building. In conjunction with the demolition, the DOE
has committed to the excavation of landfills and plumes within its perimeter road that will result
in one thousand acres of contiguous land. It will support the community's future reindustrialization
efforts. To support this effort, the DOE began a land transfer program at the Portsmouth Site that,
in 2018, transferred the first 80 acres of land to the Southern Ohio Diversification Initiative
for economic development purposes. An additional 200 acres is currently being prepared for transfer
to Ohio’s initiative with the third parcel identified for transfer in the near future.
Like its sister site in Paducah, cleanup efforts were expanded at Portsmouth
with the construction and operation of the depleted uranium hexafluoride plant
to convert and dispose of roughly twenty thousand cylinders of DUF6 left over from
sixty years of enrichment operations. DUF6 is a co-product of the uranium enrichment process
that operated at the Paducah and Portsmouth sites, as well as the gaseous diffusion plant
in Oak Ridge. EM's cleanup at Portsmouth reflects the Department's commitment
to performing and completing the remaining legacy cleanup work in a safe and efficient manner
that is protective of the site, workforce, the public, and the environment. The Portsmouth Site
will quickly see significant change as the most challenging demolition projects near completion.
By 2030, the DOE’S demolition of all three process buildings, disposal of demolition debris,
and excavation of five previously closed landfills and plumes will set the stage
for final cleanup actions to turn the remaining land back to the community for beneficial reuse.