Plutonium Contamination at Piketon Plant (Ohio)

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ACTIVIST SAYS WIDER PROBE IS WARRANTED

PLUTONIUM CONTAMINATION AT PIKETON

Date: Monday, August 23, 1999

Illustration: Photo

Byline: Bob Dreitzler

Source: Dispatch Staff Reporter

PIKETON, Ohio -- An activist hopes emerging information about plutonium

contamination at the Piketon uranium enrichment plant will lead to a broader

investigation of problems that she said have plagued the plant and its

workers for years.

" People are beginning to understand that I am not crazy because the things I

have been talking about are starting to surface,'' Vina Colley said. " Some

of the workers think I am trying to shut the plant down, but I am trying to

get them help.''

Colley, 53, worked as an electrician at the gaseous diffusion plant about 70

miles south of Columbus in the early 1980s.

At the time, she said, she was exposed to a variety of dangerous materials,

including oil laced with hazardous polychlorinated biphenyls and

contaminated with uranium.

For more than a decade, she has been gathering information about nuclear

materials and facilities and monitoring reports of leaks and spills at the

local plant.

Colley is president of a local group, Portsmouth and Piketon Residents for

Environmental Safety and Security. She also belongs to the Alliance for

Nuclear Accountability and the Military Toxic Project, which studies

depleted uranium issues and Gulf War illnesses.

She cites chronic bronchitis, chronic fatigue, hair loss, skin rashes,

thyroid and connective tissue problems among her numerous health ailments.

She's had a hysterectomy and surgeries to remove three tumors.

Colley draws Social Security disability payments and has unresolved medical

claims involving the plant's former operators and the state workers'

compensation agency.

She said concern for plant workers and the surrounding community, as much as

her health problems, have motivated her to become a watchdog.

Colley questioned whether the U.S. Department of Energy's acknowledgment

this month that plutonium may have been shipped to Piketon from a sister

plant in Paducah, Ky., is the entire story.

Colley has sent a letter to Energy Secretary Bill , asking him to

come to Piketon for an open meeting with residents and workers.

Colley and Byrd , who runs Uranium Enrichment Project for the

nonprofit Earth Island Institute in California, said the reports of

plutonium at Piketon were well-documented and virtually ignored.

They cited a 1978 engineering report on oxide conversion -- the recycling of

spent uranium fuel rods to produce more fuel -- that mentions the presence

of plutonium and neptunium in the processing system of Piketon's X-705

building.

Colley raised the possibility that there was plutonium or other

highlyradioactive material in that building and others at the Piketon plant

during a 1993 public meeting.

The Energy Department and Marietta Energy Systems, the operator of

the plant at the time, held the meeting to discuss corrective actions and

environmental restoration projects at the plant.

On a videotape of the meeting, Jeff Hedges, representing - Marietta

and the United States Energy Corp., acknowledged that " very low levels of

transuranic contamination'' had been found in the decontamination facility

of the X-705 building.

Transuranics are elements such as plutonium that have atomic weights higher

than uranium.

Hedges said safety measures were implemented, including plugging drains in

the building and changing safety clothing requirements. He said the material

was outside the X-705 building.

However, Colley read from a report that indicated transuranic contamination

had been found in two large process buildings.

T. , Marietta's manager for environmental restoration and

waste management site operations, said Hedges had referred only to locations

outside the process pipeline system when he said the highly radioactive

materials had not been found in other buildings.

" I am telling you, you have a real serious problem,'' Colley said. " You need

to tell your workers and you need to (do something) about these buildings.''

Among the thousands of documents Colley has collected about the Piketon

plant is a 1957 letter from the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union to

the state health department, citing an unusual number of deaths and

illnesses among workers.

" We beg of you . . . to have a complete investigation,'' union President C.

A. Romaine wrote. " This request comes as a last resort to get something done

down here!''

A copy of a July 29, 1977, letter to the U.S. Energy Research and

Development Administration discusses safe conversion of uranium oxide

contaminated with transuranics. Colley's copy is unsigned but bears a stamp

saying the original was signed by G.D. Althouse for Goodyear Atomic,

operator of the plant at the time.

The letter said the company wanted to proceed cautiously with uranium oxide

processing: " We will increase the scope and frequency of our monitoring (1)

to assess the buildup of transuranics in workers' bodies and (2) to

determine whether levels of transuranics discharged to the environment are

acceptable.''

A 1977 report mentioning the possibility of plutonium at the Piketon plant

also is cited in a 1996 letter sent by Cincinnati attorney Louise M. Roselle

to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.

" In 1977 the plant wrote that trace quantities of transuranics were probably

being released to Little Beaver Creek without any monitoring of these

materials,'' Roselle said. Her law firm, Waite, Shneider, Bayless and

Chesley, has handled lawsuits involving the plant and its workers.

Plant worker Owen told a Dispatch reporter in 1991 that he had

worked for nearly two years in an operation in which spent fuel rods

containing plutonium were ground up, mixed with uranium oxide and burned to

recover usable uranium. He also described working in contaminated areas with

inadequate protective gear and being blistered by hydrogen fluoride.

At the time of the interview, had undergone surgeries for removal

of two brain tumors.

He has since died.