U.S. Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) toured the Energy Department’s Portsmouth Site Friday and prodded Energy Secretary Rick Perry about the former Texas governor’s promise to visit the shuttered gaseous diffusion plant.
Portman is a constant advocate for the ongoing cleanup at Portsmouth, which besides being bedeviled by the unknown-unknowns typical to legacy nuclear-cleanups managed by DOE’s Office of Environmental Management also pays about a third of its annual cleanup bills by reselling government uranium bartered to it by DOE — an arrangement the contractor would just as soon do without.
“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. “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.”
Also in the statement, Portman reminded Perry that the now-DOE Secretary promised to visit the central Ohio site during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Perry has visited a number of DOE sites so far, concentrating his visits on national labs.
The Donald Trump administration has proposed spending more than $415 million in 2018 at Portsmouth: a substantial increase compared with the 2017 appropriation. Nevertheless, 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, has a projected would run dry in 2020 or so at the current rate of spending — with about $20 billion of work left to complete.
The fund pays for cleanup at Portsmouth, the Paducah Site in Paducah, Ky., and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn. The Portsmouth cleanup alone could last into the 2030s, according to a recent contractor estimate.
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.
