WASHINGTON — U.S. lawmakers from Ohio are prodding Energy Secretary Rick Perry to visit the Portsmouth Site their state: one of the legacy nuclear cleanup sites Perry has yet to see since taking the reins at the Energy Department in March.
“We think it would be important [for Perry] to be there and have some eyes on the process that’s taking place,” Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), said here Wednesday during a Capitol Hill meeting of the industry-sponsored House Nuclear Cleanup Caucus. “This is a community in America that all they know really is energy, and they want to get this done and then still be a part of the energy production for the United States of America. They have the infrastructure there.”
Wenstrup’s district includes Pike County, home of the Portsmouth Site. The former gaseous diffusion plant is being decommissioned and decontaminated and is not expected to be completely torn down until the 2030s.
Wenstrup made his plea less than a week after Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), perhaps the most vocal advocate for Portsmouth, visited the southern Ohio site. Portman toured Portsmouth on June 2 and took the opportunity to remind Perry about the former Texas governor’s promise to visit the shuttered gaseous diffusion plant.
Portsmouth has been bedeviled by unknown-unknowns typical of legacy nuclear-cleanups managed by DOE’s Office of Environmental Management. Contractor Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth has had some trouble characterizing the extent of the contamination at the former enrichment facility, for example.
In addition, the site operates under a peculiar funding arrangement in which about a third of Portsmouth’s annual cleanup bills are paid by reselling government uranium bartered to the contractor by DOE — an arrangement Fluor-BWXT has said is not ideal.
“It is critical that we develop a long-term funding stream and plan for this site because that will ultimately save taxpayer dollars and provide more stability for the people of Pike County,” Portman wrote in a statement about his recent visit to Portsmouth. “I will continue to work with my colleagues and the new administration to advocate for the work happening at the facility as well as its capabilities, and the role it could continue to play in our national security.”
Portman, like Wenstrup, noted that Perry promised to visit the central Ohio site during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee in January. Perry has visited a number of DOE facilities so far during his tenure, primarily the department’s national laboratories.
The Donald Trump administration has proposed spending more than $415 million in fiscal 2018 at Portsmouth. In 2017, the site netted some $315 million, including decontamination and decommissioning funding and construction funding for a new on-site waste disposal facility.
Still, the site faces long-term funding challenges. DOE’s Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning Fund, the primary bill-payer for uranium-enrichment cleanup in the weapons complex, is projected to run dry in 2020 or so at the current rate of spending. There would at that time still be about $20 billion of uranium-enrichment cleanup left to do at DOE.
Awarded in 2011, Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth’s decontamination and decommissioning contract is worth potentially $3.5 billion over a decade. Uranium barter was expected to provide a portion of the total over the life of the contract.
