Former and current Department of Energy contractors at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio have filed an unopposed motion in federal court seeking until Feb. 26 to answer a complaint by a local resident who blames his leukemia on radioactive contamination from the property.
The motion, seeking three weeks beyond the original Feb. 5 deadline, was filed Jan. 29 in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio. The government contractors are defendants in a case filed in November by Joshua Shaw.
Shaw is the latest plaintiff since 2019 to accuse the contractors of failing to control radioactive contamination from the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant. A spate of suits have been filed against the Portsmouth contractors in federal court since Zahn’s Corner Middle School, located a couple of miles from the plant, shut down in May 2019. At that time there was public disclosure of enriched-uranium contamination at the school.
Contractors identified in the litigation are BWXT Conversion Services, Bechtel Jacobs Co., Centrus Energy, LATA Parallax Portsmouth, U.S. Enrichment Corp., Uranium Disposition Services, Mid-America Conversion Services and Fluor BWXT Portsmouth.
