Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), a candidate for the U.S. Senate, used a House Appropriation Committee markup Tuesday on a Department of Energy fiscal 2023 budget proposal to discuss health concerns and hopes for economic development at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio.
During the vote approving the Energy and Water Development subcommittee’s nearly $7.9-billion budget for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, Ryan thanked subcommittee Chair Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) for supporting two of his priorities for the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant.
One is greater DOE transparency in air and groundwater monitoring around the Portsmouth Site given local “concerns about radiological contamination at Zahn’s Corner Middle School,” Ryan said. There are a “high number of children who attended this middle school over the years who have been diagnosed with and succumbed to cancer, including some very rare cancers,” he added.
The school closed in May 2019 after public reports of radiological contamination from enriched uranium on the campus. Ryan promised to help the community find funding to build a new middle school.
The DOE, which in the past has said any radiation at the school is too slight to endanger human health, on Tuesday declined comment. The question of health hazards at the school campus figures prominently in ongoing federal litigation against current and former DOE contractors at the Portsmouth Site.
Two days after the budget bill vote, the DOE Office of Environmental Management announced the award of a $500,000 grant to Piketon, Ohio Council of Governments to provide localities with funds to better participate in DOE decision-making on Portsmouth cleanup. The grant also bankrolls the establishment of a promised community liaison official for Portsmouth.
“I also want to thank you for including report language that leans on the Department of Energy to finally get off its rear end and recycle more than 20,000 tons of high-grade nickel that the department pulled out of its uranium enrichment plants,” Ryan said.
There is much excess metal, such as nickel, at Environmental Management cleanup sites that could be used in the supply chain for electric vehicles and other clean energy applications, according to the report. The DOE “might be sitting on over half a billion dollars’ worth of a prized commodity,” Ryan said.
Last August, Ryan met with union officials at Portsmouth to discuss the potential for nickel recovery at the site.
Ryan is running in November’s general election against Republican J.D. Vance, author of a best-selling memoir, titled “Hillbilly Elegy.” The pair are vying for the seat coming open with the decision by Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) not to seek another term.
Under the budget proposal’s Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning Fund (UED&D), Portsmouth would receive $480 million during fiscal 2023, up from $467 million in fiscal 2022.
While Portsmouth draws most of its money from the UED&D fund, portions are also derived from the Defense Environmental Cleanup account, for safeguards and security; and from the Non-Defense Environmental Cleanup account, for the depleted uranium hexafluoride project, according to DOE.
