By Dennis Carr
It was the proverbial mouse that roared: The Feed Materials Production Center in Ohio, a seemingly insignificant 1,050-acre Department of Energy uranium metals plant nestled between farmland and cow pastures just 18 miles northwest of downtown Cincinnati.
It was puny by DOE standards, where sites like Hanford, Savannah River, Oak Ridge, and Idaho are measured in miles. It was one of the first links in the weapons chain. In football, this plant was a lineman: no fanfare or recognition, just a glorified metals purification operation that extracted a little bit of uranium from tons of ore. There was a lot of byproduct. The other half of the plant was a metals shop that cast and machined the uranium into derbies, ingots, flats, and other products.
Fernald was nowhere on the radar screen – not with DOE, plant neighbors, regulators, or the media. And then things changed forever on a single day.
On Dec. 7, 1984, Fernald reported a dust release to the National Response Center. Approximately 220 pounds of uranium was released through the stacks. The next day it was reported in the Cincinnati Enquirer. Within a week it was national and international news.
The next cloud of dust was created by neighbors, Ohio and U.S. EPA officials, and union workers. Fernald became a staple of print media and evening newscasts. Then came the networks, along with Donahue, 20/20, 60 Minutes, Time magazine, and on and on.
I started out at Fernald in 1981 as a young engineer fresh out of college. I was hired by the original contractor team, National Lead of Ohio, that operated the plant from 1951 to 1986. A lot of the chemical operators and supervisors at this site served our nation in war and then turned around to help fight the Cold War by producing tons of high-quality uranium metal that went into reactors to make plutonium or went into armor plating and tank penetrators. These men and women in the Fernald Atomic Trades and Labor Council and their salaried colleagues believed in the site mission and never missed a deadline in 30-plus years. But this plant, like most others in the weapons complex, was designed in the late ‘40s, built and operated in the ‘50s, shutdown in the ‘80s, and wasn’t designed to meet new environmental regulatory standards. So too the public was no longer willing to sit quietly by and accept a lack of transparency by the federal government.
This Saturday, Oct. 29 at 10 a.m., an event will be held at the DOE Fernald Preserve to mark the 10th anniversary of our declaration of completion of the Fernald Closure Project. Former workers, plant neighbors, regulators, DOE Environmental Management and Legacy Management staff, and members of the Fluor Fernald team (Jacobs Engineering, Nuclear Fuel Services, and EnergySolutions) will get together to recount how this small location led to great change and how this 1,050-acre site is once again serving the Greater Cincinnati area.
While I’m sure we will forget a lot of the pain, missteps, and uncertainty that happened along the way, Fernald was a career project for many reasons. First, if this was a race we were a mile behind the starting line when the gun sounded. There was little trust and stakeholders demanded change. However, they were also willing to be part of the solution.
DOE responded.
From the top levels of DOE Environmental Management (EM) down to our field supervisors we made ourselves available to talk and work through the issues with the Site Specific Advisory Board, Fernald Residents for Environmental Safety and Health (FRESH), and fenceline neighbors. Through hundreds of meetings and thousands of hours we gradually built trust. We communicated our cleanup successes and, just as quickly, communicated when things didn’t go as planned. Together, even after all of the environmental issues that brought Fernald national attention, we sat down and agreed to a “balanced approach” for the millions of cubic yards of site waste, soils, and demolition debris. The public agreed to building an engineered disposal cell on-site — provided that the highest assay material, including the radium-bearing K-65 silos, Silo 3, waste pits, drummed waste and uranium product, would be shipped off-site. Building a disposal cell on-site was a tremendous leap of faith by our stakeholders.
Second, we took a workforce that knew how to produce uranium and transformed it into a pretty darned good deactivation workforce. The concept of “working yourself out of a job” is never easy to embrace. However, this group came around. Guards became waste shipping specialists. Chemical operators became hazardous waste operators. Administrative staff became waste acceptance inspectors. It required a lot of training and initiative on the part of many workers. I can say now that I’ve been to several other DOE sites including the Portsmouth D&D Project in Piketon, Ohio, I see some of the workers who reinvented themselves and they’ve made a career out of their Fernald experience.
Finally, the path to closure was not easy to visualize — for anybody. But as the production buildings started coming down (including Plant 7, which we had to implode twice), as trains started leaving with pit material, first on-site waste placement and ultimately removing K-65 waste from the aging silos, together we saw cleanup momentum build. That was a special time. Together with stakeholders and regulators we saw unmistakable progress. We were moving!
I don’t think many cleanup sites will mark a 10th anniversary, let alone attract the diverse group of former workers and plant neighbors who will come out this Saturday. Many of our key stakeholders literally have tracked the site more than 30 years! Some are still involved today and freely share their experiences with other sites facing similar issues. That’s pretty special. And for the past 10 years the Fernald Preserve under the DOE Office of Legacy Management has been a destination for area students of all ages, those who love nature, and those who like to exercise by walking the 7 miles of trails. That’s what happens when a community, government, and contractor come together and operate in an atmosphere of trust and partnership. That is the standard. It’s a testament to the challenges we faced together and the positive legacy we leave for this community.
Dennis Carr is Fluor Vice President and Site Project Director of the Portsmouth D&D Project in Piketon, Ohio.
