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 25,614 at the 2020 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 totalling $16.5 billion plus $2.6 billion in debt and all operations moved from their base in Oklahoma, United States. As a result of further acquisitions, most of the former Kerr-McGee is now part of Occidental Petroleum.
Karen Gay Silkwood was an American chemical technician and labor union activist known for reporting concerns about corporate practices related to health and safety in a nuclear facility.
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Uranium-233 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.
The Saxton Nuclear Experiment Station, also known as the Saxton Nuclear Generating Station or Saxton Nuclear Experimental Corporation Facility, was a small nuclear power plant located in Bedford County, near Saxton, Pennsylvania.
Tronox Limited is an American worldwide chemical company involved in the titanium products industry with approximately 6,500 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 actinide series is a group of chemical elements with atomic numbers ranging from 89 to 102, including notable elements such as uranium and plutonium. The nuclides thorium-232, uranium-235, and uranium-238 occur primordially, while trace quantities of actinium, protactinium, neptunium, and plutonium exist as a result of radioactive decay and neutron capture of uranium. These elements are far more radioactive than the naturally occurring thorium and uranium, and thus have much shorter half-lives. Elements with atomic numbers greater than 94 do not exist naturally on Earth, and must be produced in a nuclear reactor. However, certain isotopes of elements up to californium still have practical applications which take advantage of their radioactive properties.
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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), the U.S. 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.
Searles Valley Minerals Inc. is a raw materials mining and production company with corporate offices in Overland Park, Kansas. It is owned by the Indian company Nirma. It has major operations in the Searles Valley centered 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.
The Can-Met Mine is an abandoned uranium mine located approximately 12.5 km northeast of Elliot Lake, Ontario, owned by Denison Mines Ltd. The site has been rehabilitated and its tailings facility is currently undergoing environmental monitoring by Denison Environmental Services.
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 along the southern bank of the Cimarron River near Crescent, Oklahoma. The site was operated by the Kerr-McGee Corporation (KMC) from 1965 to 1975.
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.
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Thorium-based nuclear power generation is fueled primarily by the nuclear fission of the isotope uranium-233 produced from the fertile element thorium. A thorium fuel cycle can offer several potential advantages over a uranium fuel cycle—including the much greater abundance of thorium found on Earth, superior physical and nuclear fuel properties, and reduced nuclear waste production. One advantage of thorium fuel is its low weaponization potential. It is difficult to weaponize the uranium-233 that is bred in the reactor. Plutonium-239 is produced at much lower levels and can be consumed in thorium reactors.