Fernald

Web posted Wednesday, November 22, 2000

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By Brandon Haddock
Staff Writer

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To manufacture the rare radioactive materials needed to build the bombs of the Cold War, sites such as Savannah River Site needed another radioactive metal - uranium. It was Fernald's job to provide it.

For 36 years, the 1,050-acre site in southeast Ohio refined uranium for use in reactors at SRS and other nuclear weapons sites. But today, the U.S. Department of Energy is sinking millions of dollars into efforts to repair the environmental damage caused by those years of production.

Fernald, first known as the Feed Material Production Center, was founded in 1951 by the Atomic Energy Commission, predecessor to today's Energy Department, according to department history. The plant was located on more than 1,000 acres approximately 18 miles northwest of Cincinnati.

Through a complex series of chemical processes, the plant refined raw uranium ore, producing and machining pure uranium for use at other sites. In later years of the Cold War, the plant began recycling uranium from scrap and waste produced at Fernald and other sites.

But the years of production exacted a price on the environment. In 1989, production activities at Fernald came to a halt, and the site became the first in the nuclear weapons complex to focus entirely on environmental cleanup.

An extensive cleanup project is under way, with workers excavating more than 1.8 million cubic yards of contaminated soil, according to the Energy Department. Much of the soil, and an additional 375,000 cubic yards of contaminated debris, will be buried in a high-tech landfill on the site.

The plant already has completed efforts to decontaminate many former production facilities, most of which will be demolished. A wastewater-treatment plant is stripping contaminants from groundwater beneath the site.

The cleanup effort is managed by Fluor Fernald, which has operated the site under contract with the Energy Department since 1992.

Reach Brandon Haddock at (706) 823-3409.

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