Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine wants the Department to Energy to ensure additional sampling for potential contaminants is done in time for Pike County officials to decide whether to reopen a middle school near the Portsmouth Site after summer vacation.
The governor wants to resolve the question of any potential health threats at Zahn’s Corner Middle School “as quickly as possible” to avoid disruption of the 2019-2020 school year, DeWine’s press secretary, Dan Tierney, said by telephone Thursday. The Energy Department has agreed to make the issue a top priority, he said.
“While these were traces” of radioactive contaminants detected around the school, “we are taking them seriously,” Tierney said.
Routine air samples by DOE, near the school site show trace amounts of neptunium-237 and americium-241, Kelly Love, principal deputy press secretary for the federal agency, said in an emailed statement Thursday. The agency has monitoring stations in an around the old Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant.
On Monday, Scioto Valley Local School District Superintendent Todd Burkitt announced Zahn’s Corner Middle School was halting classes and starting summer break early, following detection of enriched uranium within the building and neptunium-237 by a nearby Energy Department air monitor.
In these cases, neptunium-237 and americium-241 levels “were one thousand times and ten thousand times, respectively, below the established thresholds of public health concern,” Love said. No enriched uranium was identified in any of the air samples taken by DOE at the school, she added.
The school is 2 miles from the Portsmouth Site. The Board of Education’s position is “that any level of contamination on or near our school is unacceptable,” Burkitt said in a statement.
The Energy Department takes the situation seriously, Love said. “Accordingly, we are working together with state, local officials, and the Piketon community to select an independent third party to perform additional sampling and analysis in a scientifically-sound, and disciplined manner to properly assess the situation and address community concerns.”
The Energy Department has agreed to pay for the outside testing. There was no word from any of the government entities Thursday about the process or timeline for selecting an independent consultant.
Research by Northern Arizona University supports local authorities concerns about radioactive contamination beyond background levels near the school.
There is “a reasonable degree of scientific certainty” that the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant complex is the source of contaminants found around Zahn’s Corner Middle School, according to Michael Ketterer, professor emeritus of chemistry and biochemistry at the university.
The report suggests the former uranium enrichment complex is the logical source of contaminants at the school. The study cites “the absence of any other plausible local source.”
The Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant enriched uranium, first for national defense and later for commercial nuclear power plants, from the 1950s until 2001.
Northern Arizona University did the study for free using “modern forensic approaches,” according to a copy of the report and other material distributed by the Pike County General Health District during an April 27 meeting about potential contamination.
Ketterer and other university researchers studied the issue at the request of a Pike County resident and drafted a report dated April 27. They took samples of surface soil and sediment, and water samples from local creeks and the Scioto River, along with “swipe” samples collected by local residents. “No samples were acquired from U.S. Government property,” according to the report.
The university report says dust samples from the school contain “at least some added enriched U component.” For context, the researchers also looked at a 1995 study about Portsmouth from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
By 2022 DOE plans to finish the $900 million cell to store 2 million cubic yards of contaminated waste resulting from demolition of buildings used in uranium enrichment at the site.
Locals suggest the disposal cell construction might have factored into possible contamination around the school. The Northern Arizona study does call the landfill area “a possible source” of neptunium-237. The Pike County General Health District had opposed construction of the cell.
During a meeting this week with local officials, DOE Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management Anne Marie White said the agency won’t suspend construction of the on-site waste disposal cell at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant complex until there is more data about possible contamination, according to a press release from the Pike County General Health District.
The Energy Department says it treats all detections seriously – even small ones. “We are confident that those findings will allay any cause for further concern,” the agency said in a statement earlier this week.
Neptunium-237 is a byproduct of nuclear reactors and plutonium production. Americium-241 is an isotope often found in nuclear waste.
