Overview:
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Managed by the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management (OEM), the Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning Fund supports the cleanup of some of the nation’s most contaminated areas. The polluted sites are all former production facilities used during the Cold War to supply enriched uranium for nuclear warheads and commercial nuclear reactors. Located in Tennessee, Kentucky and Ohio, the plants encompass more than 30 million square feet of floor space, miles of interconnecting pipes and thousands of acres of land that are contaminated with radioactive and hazardous materials. Cleanup of the sites isn’t expected to be completed until 2040 and cost upwards of $20 billion.
History:
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The nation’s uranium enrichment program was created in the 1940s as part of the Manhattan Project, the top secret program that produced the world’s first atomic weapons. Enriched uranium was a key component of the weapons, but the material did not exist naturally in the quantities needed. So the federal government built special gaseous diffusion plants (GDPs) that could chemically alter uranium into an enriched form. These plants featured gigantic complexes of inter-connected facilities and pipes, making them some of the largest buildings ever constructed in the United States.
The first GDP opened in 1945 at a secret facility 10 miles west of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, known as East Tennessee Technology Park (ETTP), located on a 5000-acre tract of land adjacent to the Clinch River. By the mid-1950s, five large uranium enrichment buildings covering 114 acres were in operation. ETTP also included four electrical switchyards and eight cooling towers that served the enrichment buildings.
Following the end of World War II, the government built two more gas diffusion plants. The Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, built between 1951 and 1955, is located in western Kentucky, approximately three miles south of the Ohio River and approximately 10 miles west of the city of Paducah. The site originally was known as the Kentucky Ordnance Works, a World War II munitions plant. Encompassing 3,556 acres, the Paducah GDP is situated near the West Kentucky Wildlife Management Area.
The third plant, the Portsmouth GDP in Ohio, began operation in 1956. The 3,714-acre site is located in south-central Ohio in rural Pike County, approximately 22 miles north of Portsmouth.
All three plants were used primarily to produce enriched uranium for the nation’s nuclear weapons complex until 1964 when Congress authorized the private ownership of enriched uranium for commercial uses. After this time, the amount of enriched material delivered to the commercial sector grew rapidly, and beginning in 1968, the production capacity of the three plants was increased in response to demand from the commercial nuclear power sector.
By the late 1980s, with the Cold War coming to an end and the nuclear power industry losing steam in the wake of accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, demand for enriched uranium began to decline. In response, ETTP in Oak Ridge was shut down in 1987, leaving Paducah and Portsmouth still operating. Recognizing the time had come to begin addressing decommissioning and clean up of these highly polluted facilities, the federal government established the Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning Fund (D&D Fund) as part of the Energy Policy Act of 1992 (EPAct).
Congress also decided to restructure the government-owned uranium enrichment enterprise, which was under the management of the Department of Energy, by creating the United States Enrichment Corporation (USEC) in 1993. The corporation was established as a wholly owned government corporation that is an agency and instrumentality of the United States. USEC is structured as a self-financing entity “to operate as a business enterprise on a profitable and efficient basis” to “help maintain a reliable and economical domestic source of uranium enrichment services.”
With ETTP shutdown, uranium enrichment continued at the two remaining GDP facilities until Portsmouth was closed in 2001. Since then Paducah has been the sole domestic producer of enriched uranium, although it is slated for closure in 2012. Altogether, the three GDPs comprise a massive amount of contaminated materials that need to be disposed of, as well as thousands of acres that require decontamination.
Originally, just as the D&D Fund was being established, federal officials estimated it would cost $21 billion and take more than 40 years to accomplish cleanup of the GDPs. However, the EPAct authorized annual contributions of only $480 million (from both government and industry) through 2007, for a total of $7.2 billion, leaving the project short by $13.8 billion.
In October 2007, legislation was introduced by Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) to reauthorize the D&D Fund for another 10 years. That legislation is still pending in the Senate.
Affordable Cleanup? Opportunities for cost reduction in the decontamination and decommissioning of the nation's uranium enrichment facilities (National Academy Press)
5th Triennial Report (PDF)
(Sherrod Brown Website)
What it Does:
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Established by the Energy Policy Act of 1992, the Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning Fund (D&D Fund) was created for a 15-year period to help dismantle and cleanup the nation’s three gaseous diffusion plants located in Tennessee, Kentucky and Ohio. The task of completing decontamination and decommissioning of these facilities falls under the auspices of the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management, which manages the D&D Fund.
The challenge involves dismantling multiple complexes of interconnected buildings covering hundreds of acres and thousands of large pieces of equipment. In addition to the process buildings, there are auxiliary buildings, electrical switchyards and connecting piping and electrical systems to be taken apart and carried away. Much of these facilities are contaminated with industrial, chemical, nuclear or radiological hazardous materials.
During the first 15 years of the D&D Fund, approximately $7.5 billion was allocated for decommissioning and decontamination. With the D&D Fund set to expire in 2007, even though considerable work still needs to be done at all three locations, federal officials completed a significant revision to its previous cost estimates. It is now calculated that it will cost another $8 billion to $21 billion (in addition to what has been spent) to complete the GDP cleanup activities.
East Tennessee Technology Park (ETTP) (Oak Ridge, TN)
Uranium enrichment has left a legacy of radioactive and chemical contamination in buildings, soils, sediments and groundwater. Government officials have identified more than 100 known or suspected sources of environmental contamination and found uranium and other radioactive elements from enrichment processes to be widespread in the surrounding environment. Buried uranium-contaminated equipment and low-level radiological contaminated building rubble exist at several locations. Workers used volatile organic compounds in large quantities to clean and degrease equipment, releasing these compounds into the environment. It is estimated that almost half of the 5,000-acre site contains contaminants of some kind.
The process equipment contains significant quantities of solid deposits of uranium of all degrees of enrichment. Large quantities of hazardous substances, such as asbestos and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), also exist. Careful removal of enriched uranium deposits will be required to avoid “criticality accidents” (read: nuclear explosions) and to ensure no transferred material is lost or stolen. The risk of a criticality accident is especially acute at the K-25 building at Oak Ridge due to the levels of enriched uranium found at that facility.
Clean up at ETTP is scheduled to be completed by 2012.
Portsmouth (Piketon, OH)
Work at this facility includes demolition and disposal of the GDP process equipment, process buildings and other auxiliary facilities. The project also will require remediation of contaminated soils and groundwater sources. The government hopes to clean up the site to allow industrial reuse of the land; however, federal officials still need to establish specific criteria to meet this end. A total of 134 facilities covering nearly 10.6 million square feet of floor space will need to be processed over time. The schedule for completion of the Portsmouth GDP work is now FY 2044, at an estimated cost range of $5.4 to $11.6 billion.
So far, seven warehouses containing more than 187,000 drums of lithium hydroxide monohydrate have been emptied and the material sold to private vendors.
Fourteen surplus inactive facilities have been removed from the site.
Paducah (KY)
Along with similar dismantling and cleanup tasks found at the other two GDPs, Paducah involves an abundance of surface water and groundwater resources. The plant borders the east and west sides of Little Bayou Creek and Bayou Creek, which flow north toward the Ohio River, and much of their flow contains legally-permitted discharges from the plant.
The major groundwater resource in the area is the Regional Gravel Aquifer, which historically has served as a source of water to local residents. This aquifer underlies nearly all of the secure area of the plant and continues north to the Ohio River into which it drains. Operations at Paducah have produced contaminated areas on-site and beyond site boundaries. Principal contaminants of concern include radionuclides, TCE, PCBs, metals and other plant-related contaminants. Through spills and disposal operations, these contaminants have entered groundwater aquifers, formed groundwater plumes, and in some cases, migrated off-site and contaminated private drinking water wells. Off-site groundwater contamination was first discovered in residential wells in 1988. The EPA and the state of Kentucky have been involved with the cleanup operations at Paducah since the late 1980s. In May 1994, the area was placed on the Environmental Protection Agency’s National Priorities List.
Because some uranium processing is still ongoing at Paducah, cleanup and dismantling won’t begin until 2017, with completion not until sometime in the decade beginning 2040 at the earliest.
Where Does the Money Go:
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Among the many stakeholders involved in the D&D Fund, one of the largest is defense contracting giant Lockheed Martin. A division of Lockheed Martin is the managing contractor for the USEC and runs the day-to-day operations at the three GDPs. Another division, Lockheed Martin Energy Systems, is DOE's management contractor for environmental restoration and waste management activities at the Paducah and Portsmouth sites. It is also the operations contractor at the Oak Ridge site.
Several federal and state government entities are also involved in monitoring the work of the D&D Fund. The Oak Ridge and Paducah GDPs are listed on the EPA’s National Priorities List and have negotiated Federal Facility Agreements with their respective state and regulators. Portsmouth is regulated by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 (RCRA) and has negotiated a Consent Order with the state of Ohio.
US Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) has been particularly active in efforts to renew the D&D Fund. He has also been a vocal critic of the Bush administration for its decisions affecting the cleanup of the Portsmouth site (see Controversies).
Controversies:
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Budget Cuts for Piketon
After President Bush unveiled his 2009 budget, Sen. Sherrod Brown blasted the president for making deep cuts in the D&D Fund. The budget proposal trimmed funding by $147 million from last year, prompting Brown to call the decision “indefensible.”
Brown Lambastes Administration for Cutting Critical Funds For Piketon Cleanup (Sherrod Brown Website)
Avoiding Local Input at Portsmouth
In February 2008, Sen. Sherrod Brown complained to DOE Secretary Samuel Bodman that his department was preparing to move forward on the Portsmouth site without input from local citizens. In his letter to Bodman, Brown said DOE had yet to engage the local community in the creation of DOE’s long-term cleanup plans, even though the department had done so at every other major cleanup site around the nation.
Traditionally, a community advisory board is established by DOE that creates a mechanism for community leaders to have input into the cleanup. Such boards provide feedback on important issues such as future uses of the site and how reclamation should proceed. Currently, no community advisory board exists for Portsmouth.
Brown Blasts Energy Department About Piketon Cleanup Announcement Without Community Input (Sherrod Brown Website)
Late and Over Budget at Paducah
In 2000 and again in 2004, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that cleanup efforts at the Paducah site were falling behind schedule and running over budget. Originally, it was reported by DOE that work would be completed by 2010 at a cost of $1.3 billion. Now, decontamination and decommissioning aren’t expected to conclude until 2019 and will require at least an additional $300 million.
The GAO report in 2000 noted that DOE was planning to use untested technology and questionable assumptions that funding for the cleanup would increase. Although these challenges were gone by the 2004 GAO report, the federal watchdog office noted another serious problem: stakeholder bickering. DOE, EPA and state officials in Kentucky have had difficulty agreeing on an overall cleanup approach, as well as on the details of specific projects. These disagreements have, according to GAO, “undermined trust and damaged the parties’ working relationship.”
Furthermore, the GAO found that involving EPA and the states early in the cleanup planning process had worked successfully. However, DOE officials discontinued this approach early in 2001 because incoming Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham believed that state regulators, as well as the EPA, had too much say in the development of cleanup plans. According to the GAO, “The result was an almost two-year dispute that delayed progress. This poor working relationship has also prevented the parties from quickly reaching agreement on the technical details of specific projects. Unless DOE and the regulators can reach and maintain agreement on key aspects of the cleanup and quickly resolve technical differences, progress at Paducah could continue to be plagued by delays.”
GAO Report on Extension of Uranium Fund
(PDF)
- Table of Contents
- Overview
- History
- What it Does
- Where Does the Money Go
- Controversies
- Suggested Reforms
- Comments
- Leave a Comment
Founded: 1992
Annual Budget: $628 million
Employees:
Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning Fund
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