The Rare Earths Facility was a production plant for various chemicals and metals including thorium, uranium, and radium. It was located in West Chicago, Illinois, USA. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]
The Rare Earths Facility was a production plant for various chemicals and metals including thorium, uranium, and radium. It was located in West Chicago, Illinois, USA. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]
The site was opened in 1931 by the Lindsay Light and Chemical Company. It processed ores like monazite to produce elements, including thorium and uranium. It also made gaslight mantles, and during World War II, hydrofluoric acid. [11]
In 1958, it became owned by American Potash and Chemical Company (AMPOT), [11] which at one point had a 'Lindsay Chemical Division.' [4]
In 1967, AMPOT, and thus the facility, were bought by Kerr-McGee. The Rare Earths Facility were closed by Kerr-McGee in 1973.
In 2005, KMCC was spun off from Kerr-McGee as Tronox, shortly before Kerr-McGee was acquired by Anadarko Petroleum. Tronox inherited responsibility for the Rare Earths Facility and other sites. Tronox went bankrupt in 2009 and shareholders sued Anadarko Petroleum, partly for having misled investors in Tronox about its environmental debts. [5] [6] [7] [10] [11]
In the early years, people from the surrounding community used the mill tailings as fill dirt in various properties, such as their yards and gardens. A woman who played in such a yard as a child later sued Kerr-McGee over her Hodgkin's disease and settled out of court in 1988. [12]
Radioactive waste from the plant was put in a local landfill that later became a public park called Reed-Keppler Park. [2]
Kress Creek and West Branch Dupage River (including sediments, banks, and floodplains) were contaminated by years of rainwater runoff from REF going into a storm sewer and then into the creek. [3] The floodplain includes people's yards. [12]
The West Chicago Sewage Treatment Plant was contaminated when mill tailings from REF were used as fill dirt there. This also resulted in pollution of the West Branch Dupage River from runoff and erosion. [3]
In 1991, the Illinois Department of Public Health found elevated cancer rates in the community. [12]
West Chicago is a city in DuPage County, Illinois, United States. The population was 27,086 at the 2010 census. It was formerly named Junction and later Turner, after its founder, John B. Turner, president of the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad (G&CU) in 1855. The city was initially established around the first junction of railroad lines in Illinois, and today is still served by the Union Pacific / West Metra service via West Chicago station.
The Kerr-McGee Corporation, founded in 1929, was an American energy company involved in oil exploration, production of crude oil, natural gas, perchlorate and uranium mining and milling in various countries. On June 23, 2006, Anadarko Petroleum acquired Kerr-McGee in an all-cash transaction totaling $16.5 billion plus $2.6 billion in debt and all operations moved from their base in Oklahoma, United States.
Karen Gay Silkwood was an American chemical technician and labor union activist known for raising concerns about corporate practices related to health and safety in a nuclear facility.
The Shippingport Atomic Power Station was the world's first full-scale atomic electric power plant devoted exclusively to peacetime uses. It was located near the present-day Beaver Valley Nuclear Generating Station on the Ohio River in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, United States, about 25 miles (40 km) from Pittsburgh.
The Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) formerly known as Atomic Energy Establishment, Trombay is India's premier nuclear research facility, headquartered in Trombay, Mumbai, Maharashtra. Founded by Homi Jehangir Bhabha Atomic Energy Establishment, Trombay (AEET) in January 1954 as a multidisciplinary research program essential for the india's nuclear program. It operates under the Department of Atomic Energy(DAE) which is directly overseen by the Prime Minister of India. In 1966 after the death of Homi Jehangir Bhabha AEET renamed as Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) BARC is a multi-disciplinary research centre with extensive infrastructure for advanced research and development covering the entire spectrum of nuclear science, chemical engineering, material sciences & metallurgy, electronic instrumentation, biology and medicine, supercomputing, high-energy physics and Plasma physics and associated research for Indian nuclear programme and related areas.
Uranium-233 (233U) is a fissile isotope of uranium that is bred from thorium-232 as part of the thorium fuel cycle. Uranium-233 was investigated for use in nuclear weapons and as a reactor fuel. It has been used successfully in experimental nuclear reactors and has been proposed for much wider use as a nuclear fuel. It has a half-life of 160,000 years.
Anadarko Petroleum Corporation was a company engaged in hydrocarbon exploration. It was organized in Delaware and headquartered in two skyscrapers in The Woodlands, Texas: the Allison Tower and the Hackett Tower, both named after former CEOs of the company. In 2019, the company was acquired by Occidental Petroleum.
Tronox Limited is an American worldwide chemical company involved in the titanium products industry with approximately 7,000 employees. Following its acquisition of the mineral sands business formerly belonging to South Africa's Exxaro Resources, Tronox is the largest fully integrated seller and marketer of titanium dioxide (TiO2) pigment, which provides brightness to applications such as coatings, plastics and paper. Tronox also sells titanium ore – the main feedstock of titanium dioxide - and zircon directly to customers.
The Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant is a facility located in Scioto Township, Pike County, Ohio, just south of Piketon, Ohio that previously produced enriched uranium, including highly enriched weapons-grade uranium, for the United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), US nuclear weapons program, and Navy nuclear propulsion; in later years it produced low enriched uranium for fuel for commercial nuclear power reactors. The site never hosted an operating nuclear reactor. The Portsmouth plant, so named because of its proximity to the city of Portsmouth, Ohio, approximately 22 miles south of the site, was one of three gaseous diffusion plants in the United States, alongside the K-25 plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee and the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Kentucky. The plant was constructed from 1952–1956, with the first enrichment cells going online in 1954. The former plant facilities are currently undergoing decontamination and decommissioning (D&D). Some site facilities are overseen by the United States Enrichment Corporation, a subsidiary of Centrus Energy. The D&D work on the older facilities to prepare the site for future use is expected to continue through 2024 and is being conducted by Fluor-B&W Portsmouth LLC.
Searles Valley Minerals Inc. is a raw materials mining and production company based in Overland Park, Kansas. It is owned by the Indian company Nirma. It has major operations in the Searles Valley and in Trona, California where it is the town's largest employer. The company produces borax, boric acid, soda ash, salt cake, and salt. It also owns the Trona Railway.
President Adly Mansour announced on 7 November 2013 that Egypt was restarting its nuclear power program in El Dabaa; a deal was reached with the residents in which it was agreed that a residential area will also be built. The Egyptian minister of electricity, Ahmed Emam, has called the project "necessary" because of a small amount of renewable energy sources and not enough fuel.
Sequoyah Fuels Corporation owned and operated a uranium processing plant near Gore, Oklahoma. The company was created in 1983 as a subsidiary of Kerr-McGee. In 1988 it was sold to General Atomics.
The Cimarron Fuel Fabrication Site was a nuclear fuel production facility located by the Cimarron River near Cimarron City, Oklahoma. It was operated by Kerr-McGee Corporation (KMC) from 1965 to 1975.
The Quivira Mining Corporation was a uranium mining company owned by Kerr-McGee Corporation. It was formed from the Kerr-McGee Nuclear Corporation in 1983.
American Potash and Chemical Company was a large chemical manufacturer in the United States from the 1920s through the 1960s. It produced various chemicals for US industry and the US military. It was bought by Kerr-McGee in 1967, which reformed it into the Kerr-McGee Chemical Corporation (KMCC) around 1970.
Ambrosia Lake is a uranium mining district in McKinley and Cibola counties in New Mexico north of Grants that was heavily mined for uranium starting in the 1950s. It is in an anticlinal dome.
The Westinghouse Lamp Plant located in Bloomfield, New Jersey, was one of the lamp manufacturing plants of Westinghouse Electric Corporation. The plant had a major involvement in supplying uranium metal for the world's first self-sustaining chain reaction in Chicago in the early phase of the Manhattan Project to create the first atomic bomb.