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Schmidt asked DOE for investigation of Areva - Chillicothe Gazette
U.S. Rep. Jean Schmidt said it was her initial complaint that has led the Department of Energy’s Inspector General to investigate Areva, a competitor with USEC’s American Centrifuge Plant in Piketon for federal loan guarantee money.
Schmidt said federal law prohibits the DOE from entering into contracts with companies that have business operations in the Sudan under the Sudan Accountability and Divestment Act of 2007.
Areva is a French company and, according to Schmidt, it conducts gold mining operations in the Sudan.
Nuclear Plant Promises Called Blank Sheet of Paper - Huntington News Network
A meeting of the Department of Energy’s Site Specific Advisory Board for clean up and reuse of the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant at Piketon brought forth a tug of war. Much like the Huntington downtown Superblock which lay fallow for nearly 30 years, uses for the contaminated site break down to two camps: Clean up the radioactive waste that still kills former workers versus possibly attracting a so-called new nuclear plant that would allegedly be safe.
The latter would bring jobs to an area starving for employment. But, many nearby residents do not trust the statements that a ‘new’ nuclear plant would not continue the odyssey of cover ups since the former facility opened during the Cold War in the 1950s.
However, after an elaborate news conference in the summer of 2009, the project dropped off the radar.
Activist and former Piketon employee Vina Colley, referred to past contamination as a reason to avoid nuclear power. “All of their drains and laundry [water] where they washed contaminated clothes and [water from] equipment washed off went into the local creeks, which emptied into the Scioto River, then filtered to the Ohio and down to the Mississippi. We’re not the only ones affected. The whole world is affected by what these nuclear facilities are producing and releasing into the environment.”
Loan guarantee expected by USEC in August | chillicothegazette.com | Chillicothe Gazette
A decision by the U.S. Department of Energy on whether the United States Enrichment Corp. (USEC) should receive a federal loan guarantee for the American Centrifuge plant in Piketon should come next month, the company says.\nAdvertisement\n\n"Based on ongoing discussions with DOE, we expect a decision on a conditional commitment by early August," said Philip G. Sewell, senior vice president of American Centrifuge and Russian HEU.\n\nThe company has repeatedly said the loan guarantee is essential to keeping the project - which is expected to keep and create thousands of jobs in an area with double-digit unemployment - alive.\n\nSewell said the company is working on a Plan B strategy in case the guarantee is not secured.
3 Piketon citizens' board members resign | chillicothegazette.com | Chillicothe Gazette
Three members of the citizen board tasked with offering advice to the Department of Energy on its Piketon site submitted their resignations at a meeting Thursday night.
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Lee Blackburn, Lorry Swain and Andrew Feight resigned at the start of a meeting of the Portsmouth Site Specific Advisory Board (SSAB) at The Ohio State University Endeavor Center in Piketon. In addition, Board member Terry Smith left the meeting in frustration, and two residents who had applied for an open position on the board withdrew their applications.
"Overshadowing all is our recognition that the SSAB mission has been obstructed by DOE's failure to abide by federal regulations and guard against conflicts of interest," said Swain, as she read from a letter the trio was submitting to Department of Energy Environmental Management Assistant Secretary Inés Triay.
Department of Energy - 800 to 1000 New Jobs Coming to Piketon
Department of Energy to Accelerate Cleanup Work While USEC Further Develops ACP Technology
(Washington, D.C.) The Department of Energy announced today that it will further expand and accelerate cleanup efforts of cold-war era contamination at the Portsmouth site in Piketon, Ohio – an investment worth about $150 to $200 million per year for the next four years that is expected to create 800 to 1000 new jobs. At the same time, the Department has encouraged USEC to withdraw its application for loan guarantee funding for the American Centrifuge Plant in Piketon. This would allow USEC to work over the next 12-18 months to continue research, development, and testing to resolve the technology issues facing ACP without hurting the chances of USEC to secure approval for a loan guarantee in the future.
“While we believe USEC needs time to develop its technology and demonstrate that it can be deployed at a commercial scale, we’re moving forward with other investments that will create good, high-paying jobs in the community,” said Energy Secretary Steven Chu. “USEC will have another chance to resubmit their application if they can overcome the technical and financial hurdles, but in the meantime we’ll put more people to work in the environmental cleanup effort.”
DOE denies USEC's loan guarantee; layoffs coming | Frank Munger's Atomic City Underground | knoxnews.com
The Department of Energy has denied USEC Inc.'s application for a $2 billion loan guarantee, and the company has started "demobilizing" the American Centrifuge Project, which currently employs about 450 at its Oak Ridge manufacturing site.
"There will be layoffs," USEC spokeswoman Elizabeth Stuckle said this morning. However, the number and the timing of those layoffs has not been determined, she said..
Piketon plant blaze results in no injuries, minor damage | chillicothegazette.com | Chillicothe Gazette
No injuries and minor damage were reported in a Thursday fire in an inactive cooling tower at the Piketon uranium enrichment plant.
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According to the Department of Energy, the fire was reported at 4:30 p.m. on the east side of the plant. At 5:15 p.m., the fire was said to have no off-site impact.
The fire broke out in some decking of the cooling tower, which was being removed after high winds in Saturday's storms damaged the tower. The cooling tower is one of several at the site scheduled to be decontaminated and decommissioned in the coming months with aid from American Reinvestment and Recovery Act funds.
Tenn-Ohio delegation prods Chu on USEC loan guarantee | Frank Munger's Atomic City Underground | knoxnews.com
USEC is threatening to begin demobilizing its American Centrifuge Project in August if the Dept. of Energy doesn't move forward with a commtiment on a loan guarantee, and elected officials from Tennessee and Ohio are asking Energy Secretary Steven Chu to intervene directly in the matter.
A letter signed by Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, and U.S. Sens. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and George Voinovich, R-Ohio, was sent to Chu this week.
The officials said the American Centrifuge project would solidify American's leadership in uranium-enrichment technology and create about 8,000 jobs across the country. All that is being threatened because of delays on the loan guarantees, they wrote.
Piketon cool to nuke plan | Cincinnati.Com
Despite the promise of thousands of jobs in this hard-hit part of Appalachia, some community members are skeptical as Duke Energy considers building a nuclear power plant at a former uranium enrichment plant here.
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"Myself and a few other members are disillusioned and upset," said Lorry Swain, a South Shore, Ky., resident who serves on a 20-member community panel formed last year to give the Department of Energy environmental cleanup advice at the site.
She said the panel, created under federal law to increase local input around decisions at the 3,700-acre Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion plant, didn't learn about Duke's proposal until a few days before it was announced on June 18.
With a great deal of fanfare, Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, U.S. Sen. George Voinovich and Duke Energy Chairman James Rogers announced the formation of the Southern Ohio Clean Energy Park Alliance to pursue development of the Midwest's first nuclear power plant in decades. The plan comes under an Energy Department initiative to convert former government weapons sites to clean-energy alternatives.
Portsmouth Daily Times - 3 2b Piketon D D May Take 10 Years Decontamination Decommission Will Remove Older Buildings Use For Some Still Possible
As announced at the beginning of the month the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has issued a Request for Proposal (RFP) for the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant Decontamination and Decommissioning (D&D) Project at a price tag of up to $3.2 billion.
Now, a DOE official has responded to specific questions posed by the Portsmouth Daily Times concerning the details of the project including the involvement of the immediate community surrounding the Piketon reservation.
Would the D&D project mean the dismantling of all buildings and facilities under the project title? Or just cleaning those properties up?
Community Common - DOE Issues RFP For Piketon D D Project
The United States Department of Energy (DOE) has issued a Request For Proposals (RFP) for the Decontamination and Decommissioning (D&D) of the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon. According to DOE officials the project's estimated cost is $2.5 -$3.2 billion over 10 years.
"Based on comments received on the draft RFP, DOE has issued the final RFP to emphasize accelerated D&D completion within an increased funding profile assumption, DOE stated in a released statement about the issuance of the RFP.
Columbus Dispatch : Older nuke project at risk
Even as an announcement of a plan for a nuclear-power plant was celebrated last week in Piketon, Ohio, a uranium-enrichment plant project on the same site that is to begin operating by 2011 teetered on financial collapse.
Announced 5 1/2 years ago with almost as much hoopla as the proposed nuclear project got last week, plans for the $3.5 billion enrichment plant could be dashed unless the Obama administration soon approves a $2 billion federal loan guarantee, says USEC, the suburban-Washington company slated to build the facility.
USEC applied for the loan guarantee 10 months ago under a $38.5 billion Department of Energy program launched by the Bush administration to encourage various renewable-energy and nuclear-power ventures. An enrichment plant makes material that fuels nuclear-power plants.
'Beginning' of long process for possible Piketon nuke plant begins (video) | chillicothegazette.com | Chillicothe Gazette
Calling it the "beginning of the beginning," Duke Energy chairman, president and CEO James Rogers Thursday officially kicked off the effort to bring 400 to 700 new permanent jobs to Piketon within roughly the next decade.
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The process will be pursued by a newly created partnership whose aim is to construct a new nuclear power facility in Piketon. And while it will take a considerable amount of time to complete, officials are hopeful it will lead the way to new life in a county that is presently facing 15.1 percent unemployment and routinely ranks among the highest jobless rates in the state.
"It will, I think, help revitalize the economy of this part of the state," Gov. Ted Strickland said, adding that the project would make Ohio the only state including next-generation nuclear power production in its energy portfolio.
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DUKE ENERGY: The third-largest electric power holding company in the United States based on kilowatt-hour sales, its regulated utility operations serve about 4 million customers across North and South Carolina, Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky. Its commercial power and international business segments operate diverse power generation assets in North America and Latin America, including nuclear facilities in the Carolinas. For more, visit www.duke-energy.com.
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Plans unveiled for Ohio’s first nuclear reactor in 2 decades
In one of Ohio’s poorest regions, a jazz combo played “Pennies From Heaven.” Executives from bitterly competitive companies embraced. Politicians of the two parties declared esteem for one another. A Republican senator gave a shout-out to a union leader.
Americans even applauded the French.
The world didn’t come to an end, but there were many stars in alignment Thursday, June 18, as dignitaries announced plans to turn a contaminated Cold War-era atomic plant into America’s first “clean energy park,” home to Ohio’s first nuclear reactor in two decades.
The new Southern Ohio Clean Energy Park Alliance will prepare plans and licensing documents to locate at least one reactor on a 3,700-acre federal complex 100 miles southeast of Dayton.
Duke Energy, Areva teaming up on nuke project - MarketWatch
Ohio Governor Ted Strickland, Duke Energy, Areva, USEC Inc. and UniStar Nuclear Energy said Thursday they formed an alliance to build a nuclear power plant at a U.S. Department of Energy site in Piketon, Ohio. Dubbed as the Southern Ohio Clean Energy Park Alliance, the partnership will evaluate the site as a potential location for a new nuclear power plant, including preparing a plant siting study and licensing documents for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. UniStar is a joint alliance between France's EDF and Constellation Energy /quotes/comstock/13*!ceg/quotes/nls/ceg (CEG 26.32, -0.50, -1.86%) . The clean energy park comes after a DOE effort to convert former weapons sites for energy production. Duke will manage the project, provide project oversight and serve as the applicant for any NRC licensing applications.
Portsmouth Daily Times - Committees Discuss Cleanup
Members of a committee helping to oversee cleanup of nuclear waste at the site of the now-closed Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant here met with their counterparts who worked with the cleanup of the former Feed Material Production Center in Fernald, near Cincinnati.
The Fernald plant, built by the Atomic Energy Commission, produced more than 500 million pounds of uranium metal from 1952 to 1989, said Johnny Reising, site director for the Fernald closing project for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).
Cleanup of the radioactive waste byproducts, stored in metal cylinders above ground, began in the 1980s and, after nearly 25 years, is now completed. The cost was nearly $4.5 billion.
Piketon employees' survivors appeal Workers Comp decision | chillicothegazette.com | Chillicothe Gazette
Widows of 38 former employees seeking exception to 2-year rule
Surviving family members of several former workers at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon are asking the state to make an exception concerning their Workers Compensation claims for deceased spouses who handled possibly hazardous material that may have contributed to their deaths.
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Columbus attorney Philip Fulton, on behalf of 38 widows of former workers, has appealed an order from the Ohio Industrial Commission denying state death benefits. The commission, by a 2-1 vote, had denied the compensation claims because they weren't filed within two years of the deaths of their spouses.
The Columbus Dispatch : Nuclear-plant widows upset
Federal cover-up blamed for state denying workers' comp
Nancy Meadows is a Cold War widow.
Her husband worked at the uranium-enrichment plant near Piketon from 1955 to 1996, handling stuff that ended up in nuclear weapons.
Joe Meadows and thousands of others toiled for decades amid radiation while the federal government knew -- but publicly denied -- that it was poisoning its work force.
In 1999, after years of gobbling aspirin and seldom complaining, Joe Meadows died of cancer at age 60.
More than two years later, federal officials admitted having exposed workers to radiation at the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant. Mrs. Meadows and other survivors of dead workers later received $150,000 each in federal compensation.
A 'robust' new fuel supply for nuclear power plants is emerging - NYTimes.com
A group of U.S. engineers and technicians sat down one day in 2001 to figure out where the nation's future nuclear power plant fuel was going to come from. Their decision was to leap backward 30 years and re-engineer an idea perfected during the Cold War and then abandoned here in 1985.
The technology -- an ultra-high-speed, 40-foot-high centrifuge that can produce enriched uranium -- was hunted down in government archives. At first, it was an adventure in industrial archaeology. "All the drawings and the specs were in a vault at [the National Laboratory] at Oak Ridge [Tenn.]," explained Daniel W. Rogers, who became general manager of the resurrected program. "We spent a year looking at them."
USEC gets $3.3 bln in commitments for centrifuge plant | Markets | Markets News | Reuters
* Says commitments from 10 customers
* Customers include utilities in Asia, Europe, North America
March 27 (Reuters) - Uranium fuel supplier USEC Inc (USU.N) said it had commitments worth $3.3. billion from 10 customers for a substantial portion of production at its American centrifuge plant.
The commitments from customers, including utilities in the United States, Europe and Asia, represent both accepted offers and signed contracts, which are of varying length extending as far as 2026, USEC said.
The centrifuge plant is being constructed in Piketon, Ohio, and the company has already invested more than $1.2 billion on it.
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