The former Mound Laboratory in Miamisburg, which once made explosive components for atomic weapons and was suspected of generating contaminants that made some of its workers sick, is now an office park after a $1 billion cleanup.
The Fernald uranium processing operation near Cincinnati, which processed uranium ingots for nuclear weapons, was shut down in 1989. The Energy Department directed a $4.4 billion cleanup of the site. It’s now part nature preserve and part storage site for low-level radioactive trash.
In August 2010, the Energy Department awarded a $2 billion, long-term contract to clean up the radioactively contaminated site of the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon. The plant once enriched uranium for atomic bombs and later for reactor fuel. Plans call for eventual use of the site as home to clean-energy operations.
Ohio State University’s refrigerator-sized research reactor, in operation since 1961 on the school’s Columbus campus, is used to train nuclear engineers, analyze materials and calibrate instruments that could be exposed to radiation. It remains available to college faculty statewide, Ohio State spokesman Earle Holland said Monday.
The state also is home to silent sentinels from an atomic research past.
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base is home to a retired reactor, deactivated in 1970 and entombed in concrete in 1971. Conceived as a test facility for a nuclear-powered aircraft development project that the government abandoned, the reactor was used for five years for the Air Force Institute of Technology’s nuclear engineering program.
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission records note that the old Atomic Energy Commission, forerunner to the NRC and the Department of Energy, operated a reactor in Piqua, while NASA had a test reactor in Sandusky. Both research reactors were deactivated decades ago, according to the NRC.
The two commercial reactors in northern Ohio, the Davis-Besse and Perry plants, generate almost 10 percent of the utility company FirstEnergy Corp.’s electricity output, complementing coal-fired production. Akron-based FirstEnergy is one of Ohio’s largest utility companies, with 17,500 employees, $16 billion in annual revenues and a service territory that spans northern Ohio and reaches into six other states.
Opponents of nuclear energy have focused on those plants, particularly after an alarming discovery in 2002. FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Co., a subsidiary of FirstEnergy Corp., was fined $5.45 million by the NRC after corrosion was discovered on the Davis-Besse reactor vessel head. The reactor head was replaced, and Davis-Besse returned to service in 2004.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2242 or jnolan@DaytonDailyNews.com.
About the Author