The Mound plant

Web posted Saturday, November 25, 2000

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By Brandon Haddock
Staff Writer

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As scientists and engineers have found more and more uses for nuclear energy, they often have needed more advanced tools and more exotic radioactive materials. For decades, a small plant near Dayton, Ohio, provided them.

The Mound plant, in Miamisburg, was founded in 1947, but it was rooted in the ``Dayton'' division of the Manhattan Project, the nation's secret World War II effort to build the atomic bomb.

During that war, Monsanto Chemical Co.'s Dayton Laboratories researched uranium, the radioactive, rare-earth metal needed to build an atomic weapon. The Mound site was meant to consolidate the company's research efforts, according to a history published by the U.S. Department of Energy.

The plant was the first nuclear weapons facility built after the war by the Atomic Energy Commission, the predecessor to today's Energy Department. The site drew its name from a historical Indian mound nearby.

For nearly 40 years, Mound would research and produce components, such as detonators and timers, for the nuclear weapons of the Cold War. The 306-acre facility developed reservoirs to store tritium - a radioactive gas, produced at Savannah River Site, which boosts the power of nuclear weapons - and also recycled the gas, according to Washington-based think tank The Brookings Institution.

Besides its defense-related work, Mound also produced advanced power plants - called radioisotopic thermoelectric generators - for space-exploration missions, according to the Energy Department.

Today, work at Mound focuses on an entirely different goal: closing. The Energy Department is committed to shutting the plant by 2006, meaning that the clean-up of severe pollution caused by years of weapons work must be completed quickly. Parts of the facility are being turned over to the private sector for use as a commercial and industrial park.

Reach Brandon Haddock at (706) 823-3409.

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