Current and former Department of Energy contractors must reply by Feb. 5 to the latest lawsuit accusing them of not properly controlling off-site contamination from work at the Portsmouth Site in Piketon, Ohio.
Plaintiff Joshua Shaw filed suit in federal district court in southern Ohio Nov. 27 accusing the Portsmouth Site contractors of violating the Price-Anderson Act, a law that makes compensation available to members of the public harmed by a nuclear incident.
According to the lawsuit, Shaw was diagnosed in August of 2008 with Acute Myeloid Leukemia, a type of cancer that starts in bone marrow, after living most of his life in a house on Dutch Run Road, about two miles from the former Portsmouth gaseous diffusion plant.
“The plaintiff’s father was a pipefitter at PORTS [Portsmouth] and carried entrained radioactive dust into the family home on Dutch Run Road, where his young son, Joshua Shaw, lived,” according to the suit. “Recent scientific testing performed at locations adjacent to PORTS on publicly accessible areas supports a conclusion that external radiation levels exceed the allowable level of exposure to members of the public under federal law.”
Shaw’s case is the most recent case filed since late 2019 against BWXT Conversion Services, Bechtel Jacobs Co., Centrus Energy, LATA Parallax Portsmouth, U.S. Enrichment Corp., Uranium Disposition Services, Mid-America Conversion Services and Fluor BWXT Portsmouth. The latter two contractor teams are currently in charge of Portsmouth decommissioning and depleted uranium hexafluoride conversion. The others previously did work at the site.
In earlier Portsmouth lawsuits, the contractors have argued their operations were conducted safely and in conformance with government regulations. In the current case, the court on Dec. 13 set a Feb. 5 deadline for all the defendant contractors to file their reply brief.
In May 2019 Zahn’s Corner Middle School, located within two miles of the nuclear cleanup site, closed after the public disclosure of contamination from enriched uranium at the school.
Meanwhile, one of the four active Portsmouth contamination cases before Chief U.S. District Judge in Southern Ohio, Algenon Marbley, and Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Preston Deavers has started mediation. That case involves the cancer death of a 13-year-old Piketon boy who lives within a couple miles of the DOE site.
The counties around the Portsmouth plant, Pike, Scioto, Vinton, Adams, and Lawrence Counties, “are among those having the highest cancer rates in Ohio,” according to the Shaw lawsuit.
