Portsmouth completes controversial fourth cell construction at On-Site Waste Disposal Facility

The U.S. Department of Energy’s office of Environmental Management announced Tuesday it has completed construction of the fourth On-Site Waste Disposal Facility cell at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio.

The fourth cell will be used to dispose of debris of uranium enrichment process buildings, Federal Project Director Jud Lilly said in the DOE press release. Currently, the X-333 Process Building, the second of three process buildings to be demolished at the site, is enduring the deactivation and teardown process with debris placement set to begin in the spring.

Two more cells are scheduled to complete construction later this year, with the goal of having 10 cells to accept demolition debris and impacted soils produced by the deactivation and demolition project.

The On-Site Disposal Cell has faced opposition in the past by the local community. In 2019, the then-mayor and longtime project opponent Billy Spencer of neighboring town Piketon, Ohio, said flooding in the area worries him and citizens. “It is just too wet here for a hundred-acre nuclear dump,” he had said.

Area residents also fear potential contaminated runoff from the cell during such heavy rains could pollute local tributaries or have other environmental impacts. Then-deputy manager for the Portsmouth/Paducah Project office told the Exchange Monitor in 2019 that the facility was built to hold up under wet weather conditions.