The current COVID-19 public health emergency, which has laid waste to scheduled events great and small, is delaying plans to sample for potential radiological contamination around a Pike County, Ohio, middle school near the Energy Department’s Portsmouth Site.
Officials from the DOE Office of Environmental Management said during a March industry conference in Phoenix they expected sampling to start by now around the Zahn’s Corner Middle School, located a couple miles from the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant. But over the last month there has been a steady drumbeat of federal and state actions restricting business travel and suspending most “nonessential” business during the pandemic.
Permission from property owners has already been granted for staff from Ohio-based Solutient Technologies to come onto private land to collect air and soil samples, “and this study will proceed as soon as travel is permitted for this purpose,” Pike County General Health District Commissioner Matt Brewster said in a Tuesday email. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has issued a stay-at-home order that forbids most nonemergency travel that does not involve securing food and other necessary supplies, or obtaining medical care.
Zahn’s Corner Middle School has been closed since May 2019, after analysis by Northern Arizona University researchers determined that samples collected in the area contained enriched uranium and neptunium-237. Subsequent DOE sampling detected only trace amounts of radioactive contaminants, which the agency says are far too minimal to pose a risk to human health.
Solutient Technologies will collect and analyze air and dust samples at the school and other areas within 6 miles of the Portsmouth Site. The firm, the county health district, and local officials have worked to develop the data quality objectives for the independent assessment, Brewster said.
The Energy Department is footing the bill for the analysis through a $4 million grant to Ohio University.
Locals Want Say in Waste Criteria for Portsmouth Disposal Cell
Meanwhile, the Pike County, Ohio, Board of Commissioners says local residents should have a chance to review waste acceptance criteria for the On-Site Waste Disposal Facility being built at the Portsmouth Site.
The Energy Department and cleanup contractor Fluor-BWXT recently sent a draft of the Waste Acceptance Criteria Implementation Plan, which specifies the types of waste that can go into the facility, to the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.
The document does not appear to have been made available for public comment. The Ohio EPA did not immediately respond to a request for comment this week.
“Based on what we have experienced with DOE recently there is substantial reason to not only doubt DOE but to actively oppose any further action” until the waste criteria plan “is fully disclosed to the public and an open dialog for the public to question areas or topics of concern is made possible,” the county commissioners said in a public letter submitted Monday to the state agency.
The board would prefer all contaminated material located at Portsmouth be removed from Pike County. It said in the letter the level of radioactive and chemical contamination of waste that goes into the facility should be revealed to the public.
The first few disposal cells are about ready at the $900 million facility, and disposal could start this fall. When all 12 cells are completed, the facility will have a disposal capacity of 2 million cubic yards.
The Energy Department has characterized the On-Site Waste Disposal Facility as the safest available option for handling construction debris from large structures such as the X-326 process building, which is scheduled to start coming down this fall.
Public meetings on the disposal facility are planned for this fall, an Energy Department spokesperson said by email Tuesday. The agency did not specify, however, if the public will have input on the waste criteria before disposal starts.
