With research and development efforts winding down in earnest at the American Centrifuge Plant near the Energy Department’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio, Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) made a plea on the Senate floor Tuesday to increase the fiscal 2017 budget for another big Pike County jobs project: an on-site waste-disposal facility.
As part of the $37.5 billion 2017 energy and water spending bill that includes almost $31 Billion for DOE overall and just over $6 billion for the agency’s legacy nuclear waste cleanup program, the Senate recommended about $42 million for Portsmouth’s 15–U–408 facility — almost double what the site received from Congress in the current budget.
“I’m hoping that the House will even increase that money for that disposal cell a little more,” Portman said on Senate floor.
The House has not yet scheduled a floor vote for its version of DOE’s 2017 budget. Meanwhile, the fate of the Senate bill is in question after Democrats in the chamber Wednesday united to block a controversial amendment proposed by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) that would bar DOE from using its 2017 appropriation to buy Iranian heavy water. Those purchases, announced by the White House late April 22, are part of the nuclear arms-control deal the United States and five other nations struck with Tehran last year.
The House’s 2017 E&W bill provides about 3 percent less for DOE’s legacy waste cleanup program than the Senate’s proposal, but calls for a larger increase than did the Senate for the 15–U–408 facility: $58 million, or not quite three times more than the fiscal 2016 appropriation. A spokesman for Fluor-BWXT said Friday $58 million would allow the company to open the waste facility’s first disposal cell in November 2019.
DOE and the state of Ohio decided to build an on-site waste disposal facility at Portsmouth in 2015. The 100-acre facility is expected to cost some $340 million to build, according to the DOE budget request the White House released in February. The facility would permanently store most of the roughly 1.4 million cubic yards of waste expected to result from the demolition work remaining at the former uranium enrichment site, DOE said in a press release last year announcing the decision to build the facility.
A spokesperson for Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth, DOE’s prime contractor for Portsmouth decontamination and demolition, would open the facility’s first disposal cell for waste in November 2019, assuming the House’s proposed appropriation becomes law. If the funding comes in “significantly lower” than that, the cell might open in November 2020 “or later,” the spokesperson said.
The on-site disposal facility is being designed to serve the site for the life of the cleanup, which is expected to stretch out into the 2030s. In peak development years form 2019 to 2021, there would be about 300 heads on the project, including subcontractors, the Fluor-BWXT spokesperson said.
By Portman’s count Tuesday, the enture Portsmouth Site — a major employer in rural Piketon County — employs about 2,000 people.
Overall, the Senate’s bill would give Portsmouth $265 million for the budget year beginning Oct. 1, or 18 percent more than it received in the current spending plan. The House’s bill would provide just over $270 million, or 21 percent more than in fiscal 2016. The White House proposed a 14-percent increase over 2014 levels.
Meanwhile, Portman made no mention of the American Centrifuge Plant nearby the Portsmouth Site. Ohio’s junior senator has been a steadfast defender of the project, which DOE canceled last year.
Centrus Energy, after paying some $35.5 million out of its own pocket to keep the industrial-scale uranium enrichment demonstration going in Ohio, earlier this year began preparing the plant for decontamination and demolition after the White House requested no funding for the Ohio portion of the ACP program in 2017.
On March 4, 60 workers were laid off from the American Centrifuge Plant in Pike County, leaving 150 Centrus badges on site.
