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December 29, 2016
Dr. Vincent Adams congratulates crew members who prepared the first shipment of process gas equipment from the Portsmouth Site in early 2013.
Dr. Vincent Adams Retiring After 30-Year DOE Career

LEXINGTON, Ky. – Dr. Vincent Adams, deputy manager of EM’s Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office (PPPO), retires at the end of this month after 30 years at DOE.

November 10, 2016
Energy Department Announces Agreement to Sell Depleted Uranium to be Enriched for Civil Nuclear Power

News Media Contact: (202) 586-4940

GE-Hitachi Global Laser Enrichment Evaluating Construction of $1 Billion Facility for Enrichment Bringing Hundreds of Jobs to Western Kentucky

November 2, 2016
Front, left to right: Tyler Hicks and Rob Swett from DOE’s Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office in Lexington pack non-perishable items for donation to local food pantries.
Energy Department Workers Gather Food for Local Families in Need

LEXINGTON, Ky—Workers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office (PPPO) in Lexington, Kentucky – together with its two gaseous diffusion plants in southern Ohio and western Kentucky – recently collected a total of 13,958 pounds of food for charity pantries in their local communities.    

October 31, 2016
Portsmouth’s X-326 Process Building.
Alternative Approach Saves Time, Money Preparing for Demolition

PIKETON, Ohio – An alternative approach to determine how much remaining uranium is in piping and equipment should reduce time safely preparing the EM Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant’s three massive process buildings for demolition.

October 20, 2016
More than 1,400 educators and students participated in the 2016 Science Alliance event at DOE's Portsmouth Site in Piketon, Ohio.
Record number of students attend 8th DOE Science Alliance event

PIKETON, Ohio  ̶  More than 1,400 students and educators from 25 southern Ohio high schools participated in the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) 8th Science Alliance event October 4-6, 2016, at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, Ohio.  
 

October 20, 2016
Tour guide Steve Christmas of Fluor Federal Services discusses the process to enrich uranium as participants gather in the former plant’s main control room. (Photo by Will Evans)
First Paducah DOE Site Tours Attract Visitors From Across the Nation

PADUCAH, Ky.—The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) recently completed its first year of public tours at its Paducah Site, welcoming nearly 500 people from 16 states.

“The response to the public tours reflects that our community has an interest in learning about the plant’s history and ongoing work,” said Jennifer Woodard, Paducah Site Lead for DOE’s Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office (PPPO).

October 17, 2016
Operators drill wells during the first phase of the project to further optimize groundwater treatment.
Paducah Site Improves Groundwater Treatment

PADUCAH, Ky. – Nine new monitoring wells have been installed in the northeast section of EM’s Paducah Site, representing the first phase of a project to enhance groundwater treatment.

September 29, 2016
Attendance Continues to Grow for 8th Portsmouth Science Alliance Event

PIKETON, Ohio  ̶  More than 1,400 students and educators are anticipated for the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) 8th Science Alliance event, scheduled for October 4-6, 2016 at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, Ohio.

That record number of expected attendees continues a trend of growth for the interactive science fair, which began in 2010 and aims to introduce STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) subjects to high school juniors who are making decisions about their futures.

September 23, 2016
Intern Schubert Moffatt presents Jennifer Woodard, DOE Site Lead, with 2,583 pounds of food collected to support the DOE Feds Feed Families program.
College Students Graduate from Intern Program at DOE Paducah Site

PADUCAH, KY—Seventeen college students recently graduated from a 10-week summer internship program with Fluor Paducah Deactivation Project, the U.S. Department of Energy‘s (DOE) cleanup contractor at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant Site.  The purpose of the program is to provide opportunities to outstanding students who may be interested in careers that intersect with needs and positions at the DOE Site.  
  

August 31, 2016
Fluor-BWXT Site Project Director Dennis Carr, left, learns how to operate a FirstLook robot from Fluor-BWXT Nondestructive Assay Engineer Kevin Banks.
Robotics Challenge Aims to Enhance Worker Safety, Improve EM Cleanup - Other EM Events Set for September Focus on Safety, Technology Development

PIKETON, Ohio – EM and its Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office (PPPO) hosted the “EM Science of Safety: Robotics Challenge” Aug. 22-25 at the Portsmouth Site in cooperation with cleanup contractor Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth (FBP).

August 31, 2016
Thor Zollinger with Manta Robotics uses a rod to rotate the camera to perform the visual tank inspection with the HD camera.
DUF6 Conversion Project Uses Technology to Reduce Hazards

LEXINGTON, Ky. – EM has adopted a safer, more effective method for internal tank inspections at the Depleted Uranium Hexafluoride (DUF6) Conversion Plants at the Paducah, Kentucky and Portsmouth, Ohio sites.

August 15, 2016
The 516-T, nicknamed the “spider,” included multiple conveyor belts carrying soil through a series of screens to sift bullet debris from the soil of the former outdoor firing range on the EM reservation.
EM ‘Gets the Lead Out’ Removing Portsmouth Site Outdoor Firing Range

PIKETON, Ohio – Workers removed an unusual facility to make way for a new disposal site as part of decontamination and decommissioning of the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in southern Ohio.

July 28, 2016
A teachers group organized by the Buckeye Hills Career Center prepares for a driving tour of the Portsmouth Site.
Portsmouth Site Tour Focuses on Potential Careers for High School Graduates

PIKETON, Ohio – Twenty-seven area high school teachers recently visited EM’s Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant Site as part of a training program in career counseling.

July 15, 2016
Eugene Waggoner poses for a portrait in the C-300 Central Control Building at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant.  (Story and photo by Dylan Nichols, Fluor Paducah Deactivation Project.)
Paducah DOE Site Tours Nostalgic for Former Workers

PADUCAH, Ky. – Eugene Waggoner was 29 when the first equipment began enriching uranium at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant.

Numerous officials from the Atomic Energy Commission, the predecessor agency to the Department of Energy (DOE), and then-plant-operator Union Carbide, had gathered at the C-333 process building as the first valve was opened to introduce uranium hexafluoride into the enrichment equipment at what was known as Unit 1.

July 8, 2016
Marshall County High School AP Physics students toured the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant Site in Western Kentucky as part of an environmental report project with DOE.  (Photo by Steve Christmas, Fluor Paducah Deactivation Project)
Students Enhance Skills on Paducah DOE Project

PADUCAH, KY— The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Paducah Site is helping advanced placement (AP) physics students from Marshall County High School on a project focused on the site’s effect on the environment.

The students are summarizing a report entitled the Annual Site Environmental Report (ASER), which describes ongoing environmental operations and analytical data on DOE’s former Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant Site.  The ASER explains the ongoing environmental monitoring and remediation programs to site stakeholders.   

July 1, 2016
Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth workers seal the HEUFS material into a sealed waste container.
DOE’s Portsmouth Site Disposes of Decades-Old Waste Stream

PIKETON, Ohio – Disposition of a 40-plus-year-old legacy waste at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant site was completed thanks to a cooperative effort among the Department of Energy (DOE), contractors, and private industry.

Since 1973, DOE worked to characterize and dispose of these High Enriched Uranium Fluoride Solids (HEUFS). The task was to find an acceptable disposition path for the complex waste stream that resulted from oils entering the uranium enrichment cascade during operations.

June 15, 2016
Larry McCandless of Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth demonstrates the use of the GIS viewer.
DOE Portsmouth Site Puts Environmental Database Online

PIKETON, Ohio – Environmental sampling data at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site is now accessible to the public through an enhanced geographic mapping tool on the Internet.

The tool offers access to information such as publicly available environmental documents, and groundwater-level and analytical data.

June 15, 2016
A physical security specialist with Wastren-EnergX Mission Support, LLC conducts a secured-area inspection as part of the contractor’s security oversight duties at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant Site.
Two EM Contractors Are Among Fiscal Year 2015 Small Business Award Winners

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Two contractors supporting EM cleanup have been recognized with awards from DOE’s Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization.

June 1, 2016
A maintenance mechanic removes a filter from the lubricating oil strainer in the C-333 Building at the Department of Energy’s Paducah Site.  (Photo by Dylan Nichols, Fluor Paducah Deactivation Project)
Removal of Hazards Key to Deactivating DOE’s Paducah Site

PADUCAH, Ky. – Deactivation workers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Paducah Site completed a significant step toward preparing key facilities for future demolition by removing hundreds of thousands of gallons of lubricating oil from the site’s uranium enrichment process buildings.

More than 265,000 gallons of the oil that had been used primarily in the large buildings and supporting equipment have been pumped from large tanks and thousands of miles of pipes inside the buildings.

May 25, 2016
Students from Carla Evans’ Advanced Environmental Science class at Waverly High School visit Lake Hope State Park as part of educational activities included within the Ohio University Student ASER Summary Project. The summary will be distributed to stakeholders in the region this fall.
Waverly Students Prepare DOE Environmental Report Summary

PIKETON, Ohio – The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Annual Site Environmental Report (ASER) is an approximate 300-page, technically complex document that characterizes various aspects of the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, Ohio.

To a group of Waverly High School students who were tasked with summarizing it (complete with graphics), it was something else.

May 16, 2016
A front loader dumps a bucket of coal into the first of more than 700 trucks that will be used to transport coal from EM's Paducah Site to buyers.  (Photo by Dylan Nichols, Fluor Paducah Deactivation Project)
DOE Transfers Coal to Fuel Paducah Area Economic Development

PADUCAH, Ky. – The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) recently completed transferring ownership of nearly 15,000 tons of excess coal to the Paducah Area Community Reuse Organization (PACRO), which PACRO will use as a revenue stream to support economic development.

May 13, 2016
Tour participants stopped for a picture in the C-300 Central Control Facility at the Paducah DOE site during the inaugural community tour on April 23, 2016.  (Photo by Dylan Nichols, Fluor Paducah Deactivation Project)
DOE Hosts First Paducah Site Tours

PADUCAH, Ky. — For the first time, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is conducting guided public tours of its Paducah Site.  Several tours are being conducted for the public to learn about the history of the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant.  All eight tours for 2016 filled up quickly, starting with the inaugural tours on April 23.

Some of the participants in the initial tours have been former plant workers like Eugene Waggoner, who is 95 years old and started working at the plant in 1952.

April 14, 2016
Richard Mayer, right, is pictured with Portsmouth Site Director Dr. Vincent Adams with a plaque commemorating Mayer’s accomplishment.
Portsmouth Site Engineer Authors Safety Standard

PIKETON, Ohio – Decontaminating and decommissioning a more than 60-year-old Cold War uranium enrichment facility at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant is a task of extraordinary magnitude requiring stringent policies and procedures so work can be performed safely.

April 14, 2016
Ohio University held discussions with the public on future uses of the Portsmouth Site as part of the PORTSfuture process.
New Grants Fund Continued Research, Outreach for EM's Portsmouth, Paducah Sites

LEXINGTON, Ky. – EM recently awarded grants to Ohio University (OU) and the University of Kentucky (UK) to develop publicly available information related to the cleanup of the Portsmouth and Paducah gaseous diffusion plant sites in Ohio and Kentucky.

March 31, 2016
DOE Announces Public Tours of Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant site

PADUCAH, KY - The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced the opportunity for members of the community to participate in public tours of the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant site starting monthly in April 2016. This will be the first time tours of the DOE site will be available to the public in its more than 60-year history. Tours will offer a guided history of the site and information on the cleanup activities. Below is a list of tour dates for 2016.