A Northern Arizona University researcher, Michael Ketterer, recently reasserted findings from 2019 that radioactive contamination from the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio poses a concern for people outside the fence, and local leaders are using his analysis to press for federal money to replace a shuttered school.
In an April 28 letter to Matthew Brewster, the commissioner for Pike County Ohio’s general health district, Ketterer said his recent review of publicly-available DOE data indicates “beyond any reasonable level of question” that neptunium-237 is present in groundwater.
In addition, “DOE’s past actions of irresponsible disposal of transuranic (TRU) wastes” including neptunium-237 and plutonium isotopes “have resulted in the groundwater contamination that exists decades later.” Ketterer is professor emeritus of chemistry and biochemistry and his analysis of air and soil samples prompted education officials in Pike County, to stop using the Zahn’s Corner Middle School, just outside the gaseous diffusion plant complex, in May 2019.
The DOE, which has done its own sampling and helped underwrite additional sampling, has said any contamination around the school is too minimal to pose a threat to human health. DOE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Scioto Valley-Piketon Area Council of Governments met May 10 with Deputy Secretary of Energy David Turk and DOE’s acting assistant secretary for the Office of Environmental Management, William (Ike) White, and had a follow-up meeting May 13 with White. The Council of Governments was represented in part by two former members of Congress from Ohio, Zack Space and Mark Schauer, as well as former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, all Democrats, according to a memo issued by the council Wednesday.
The local Council of Governments again urged DOE to fund replacement of the Zahn’s Corner Middle School. The Council of Governments also expressed “grave concerns” about plans for open-air demolition of the X-326 Process Building at the Portsmouth Site. If DOE goes ahead with it, the organization wants the federal agency to provide a community liaison to improve communication between the locals and the federal government.
The community has “in many respects, lost faith and trust” in DOE’s Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office in Lexington, Ky., which oversees the two former uranium enrichment sites, the Council of Governments said.
Current Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) used a May 6 Congressional hearing to ask Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm to set up a meeting between DOE brass and local officials.
