Ohio Lawmakers Call on Feds to Restore American Centrifuge Funding
The Ohio House of Representatives on Wednesday officially petitioned the federal government to restore funding the Department of Energy cut last year for a uranium enrichment centrifuge project in Ohio.
In House Concurrent Resolution 30, approved with only a single dissenting vote, state lawmakers said “terminating funding for the American Centrifuge Program will have an irreversible impact on future enrichment capability at the American Centrifuge Plant in Piketon, Ohio, and on the specialized workforce and the communities in and around Piketon, Ohio; and … will adversely affect the local economy in southern Ohio and will result in the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars in income tax and sales tax revenues to local communities already experiencing high levels of unemployment.”
DOE announced in September it would pull the plug on the advanced centrifuge site, and plant operator Centrus Energy, of Bethesda, Md., has been paying out of its own pocket since October to keep the facility online.
The Department of Energy had the option, under the 2016 omnibus spending signed in December, to divert $50 million from other programs to the centrifuge project in 2016. The agency did not, instead limiting work on the program to development activities at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.
Now, Ohio lawmakers want DOE to “reverse the decision to terminate funding for the American Centrifuge Program,” according to the resolution, which was sponsored by Ohio Rep. Terry Johnson and Ohio House Speaker Cliff Rosenberger, who are both Republicans.
Centrus is due to decide later this month or early in March whether to layoff about 70 people who work at the centrifuge facility.
Portsmouth Site Specific Advisory Board Gets Kudos From Local Chamber
The Pike County Chamber of Commerce recognized the Portsmouth Site Specific Advisory Board as its 2015 organization of the year, the Energy Department wrote in a Feb. 12 press release.
Established in 2008, the board provides community input and recommendations to DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, which is responsible for legacy waste cleanup at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant Site, a former uranium enrichment facility near Piketon, Ohio.
The DOE-chartered Federal Advisory Committee Act board provides nonbinding policy advice about the site, including budget, waste management and disposition, decontamination and decommissioning activities, environmental restoration, future land use, historic preservation, and community engagement.
Each of DOE’s 16 active legacy cleanup sites has an associated site specific advisory board. A national Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board also comprises leaders of all the local boards.
The Portsmouth site is one of three former uranium enrichment cleanup jobs managed by DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, along with Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee and the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant near Paducah, Ky. Oak Ridge cleanup is furthest along, with Portsmouth and Paducah slated to ramp up under the fiscal 2017 budget request the White House unveiled last week.
DOE faces a roughly $20 billion shortfall for uranium enrichment cleanup work, which the agency estimates will take until the 2040s to complete. The White House has proposed, as part of its latest budget request, tapping into the $1.6-billion United States Enrichment Corp. fund to help pay for the work. The plan would require two acts of Congress: one to authorize any cleanup spending from the fund, which was not created for that purpose, and another to actually appropriate the money for remediation.
