Current and former Department of Energy contractors at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio deny responsibility in court papers filed this week for the cancer death of a 13-year-old boy who lived near the nuclear cleanup property.
The eight contractors filed a response Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for Southern Ohio to a wrongful death lawsuit filed in June by Brad Allen Lykins. Lykins alleges off-site radioactive contamination from the former gaseous diffusion plant contributed to the March 2021 death of his son, Braden Aaron Lee Lykins. Braden Lykins died from leukemia.
The 12-page legal answer by Centrus, USEC, Uranium Disposition Services, BWXT Conversion Services, MidAmerica Conversion Services, Bechtel Jacobs Co., LATA/Parallax Portsmouth and Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth, is largely a paragraph-by-paragraph denial of the complaint.
The companies and joint ventures admitted routine details that are largely public record. The entities all were hired by DOE’s Office of Environmental Management to perform work at the former uranium enrichment complex near Piketon, Ohio.
“Defendants admit that there is a middle school in Piketon called Zahn’s Corner Middle School,” but denied other items in the lawsuit that suggest the contractors’ work allowed contamination to escape outside the fence and endanger public health.
The father’s lawsuit said his son had attended Zahn’s Corner Middle School, still closed after evidence of radioactive contamination was publicly reported in May 2019. The 13-year-old lived his entire life in and around Piketon, according to the suit.
Among others, the defendants also raised several affirmative defenses such as standing, applicable statute of limitations and the government contractor defense, which allows contractors to share federal immunity.
A pretrial status teleconference on the case was scheduled for Sept. 29. The case has been assigned to the same federal judge overseeing litigation brought against the same group of contractors by Ursula McGlone and Pike County residents living within five miles of the Portsmouth Site.
