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Enriched uranium is a type of uranium in which the percent composition of uranium-235 has been increased through the process of isotope separation. Naturally occurring uranium is composed of three major isotopes: uranium-238, uranium-235, and uranium-234. 235U is the only nuclide existing in nature that is fissile with thermal neutrons.
Piketon is a village in Pike County, Ohio, United States, along the Scioto River. The village is best known for the uranium enrichment plant located there. The population was 2,181 at the 2010 census. Originally called Jefferson, it was the county seat of Pike County 1815–1845, when James Emmitt, a wealthy local entrepreneur, influenced removal of the county seat to Waverly, due to its closer proximity to the then new Ohio & Erie Canal. Piketon is the location of the Pike County Fairgrounds and is served by the Scioto Valley School District.
Bechtel Corporation is an American engineering, procurement, construction, and project management company founded in San Francisco, California, and headquartered in Reston, Virginia. It is the largest construction company in the United States.
Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory is a U.S. Government-owned research and development facility in the Pittsburgh suburb of West Mifflin, Pennsylvania, that works exclusively on the design and development of nuclear power for the U.S. Navy. It was one of the leaders in creating the nuclear navy.
The United States Department of Energy National Laboratories and Technology Centers are a system of facilities and laboratories overseen by the United States Department of Energy (DOE) for scientific and technological research. Sixteen of the seventeen DOE national laboratories are federally funded research and development centers administered, managed, operated and staffed by private-sector organizations under management and operating (M&O) contract with DOE.
The Savannah River Site (SRS) is a nuclear reservation in the United States in the state of South Carolina, located on land in Aiken, Allendale, and Barnwell counties adjacent to the Savannah River, 25 miles (40 km) southeast of Augusta, Georgia. The site was built during the 1950s to refine nuclear materials for deployment in nuclear weapons. It covers 310 square miles (800 km2) and employs more than 10,000 people.
Gaseous diffusion is a technology used to produce enriched uranium by forcing gaseous uranium hexafluoride (UF6) through semipermeable membranes. This produces a slight separation between the molecules containing uranium-235 (235U) and uranium-238 (238U). By use of a large cascade of many stages, high separations can be achieved. It was the first process to be developed that was capable of producing enriched uranium in industrially useful quantities, but is nowadays considered obsolete, having been superseded by the more-efficient gas centrifuge process.
K-25 was the codename given by the Manhattan Project to the program to produce enriched uranium for atomic bombs using the gaseous diffusion method. Originally the codename for the product, over time it came to refer to the project, the production facility located at the Clinton Engineer Works in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the main gaseous diffusion building, and ultimately the site. When it was built in 1944, the four-story K-25 gaseous diffusion plant was the world's largest building, comprising over 1,640,000 square feet (152,000 m2) of floor space and a volume of 97,500,000 cubic feet (2,760,000 m3).
The Y-12 National Security Complex is a United States Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration facility located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, near the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. It was built as part of the Manhattan Project for the purpose of enriching uranium for the first atomic bombs. It is considered the birthplace of the atomic bomb. In the years after World War II, it has been operated as a manufacturing facility for nuclear weapons components and related defense purposes.
Weldon Spring Ordnance Works (WSOW) was a 17,323-acre (70.10 km2) U.S. Government-owned, contractor-operated (GOCO) facility in St. Charles County, Missouri, 55 km west of St. Louis. The site was originally operated by the Atlas Powder Company during World War II from 1941 to 1945 to produce explosives. The Atomic Energy Commission acquired part of the property in 1955, and Mallinckrodt, Inc. processed uranium ore from 1957 to 1966 under contract. The site has been divided into several parcels, and ownership has transferred over the years. Two portions of the original WSOW property are now Superfund sites that require substantial cleanup efforts. The environmental remediation of the WSOW site is currently designated as a major project of the Defense Environmental Restoration Program of the United States Department of Defense. Part of the original property is still used by the Army Reserve as the Weldon Spring Training Area.
Kyger Creek Power Plant is a 1.08-gigawatt, 1,086 (MW) coal-fired power station located south of Cheshire, Ohio in Gallia County, Ohio. It is operated by the Ohio Valley Electric Corporation (OVEC).
Clifty Creek Power Plant is a 1.3 gigawatt, 1,300 (MW) coal-fired power station located in Madison, Indiana. Clifty Creek is operated by the Indiana Kentucky Electric Corporation. It is named after Clifty Creek, the naming feature for the power plant, which enters the Ohio River nearby.
The Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) is a multi-program national laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Environmental Management. SRNL is located at the Savannah River Site (SRS) near Jackson, South Carolina. It was founded in 1951, as the Savannah River Laboratory. It was certified as a national laboratory on May 7, 2004.
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.
The three Oak Ridge gatehouses, also known as "checking stations", "guard houses", or "guard shacks", are security checkpoints in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, built c. 1948-1949 to control access to the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) production and research facilities in Oak Ridge. These are individually listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places as Bear Creek Road Checking Station, Bethel Valley Road Checking Station and Oak Ridge Turnpike Checking Station.
The Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant (PGDP) is a facility located in McCracken County, Kentucky, near Paducah, Kentucky that produced enriched uranium from 1952 to 2013. It is owned by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The PGDP was the only operating uranium enrichment facility in the United States in the period 2001 to 2010. The Paducah plant produced low-enriched uranium, originally as feedstock for military reactors and weapons, and later for commercial nuclear power fuel.
Centrus Energy Corp. is an American company that supplies nuclear fuel for use in nuclear power plants. It is the parent company of the United States Enrichment Corporation, a corporation that contracts with the United States Department of Energy to produce enriched uranium for nuclear power stations.
Clarence Edward Larson was an American chemist, nuclear physicist and industrial leader. He was involved in the Manhattan Project, and was later director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory and commissioner of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission.
Consolidated Nuclear Security is an American federal contractor. They are one of the 100 largest federal contractors in the United States.
References
- ↑ Bechtel Jacobs Company Receives Contract from U.S. DOE [ permanent dead link ], Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. press release, October 21, 2003
- ↑ U.S. Department of Energy Awards Portsmouth Remediation Contract To LATA/Parallax; $141 Million Small Business Contract Runs Through September, 2009 Archived 2009-04-12 at the Wayback Machine , U.S. Department of Energy press release, January 10, 2005
- ↑ LATA/Parallax Portsmouth, LLC website Archived 2008-07-04 at the Wayback Machine
- ↑ Joe Walker, DOE plant site gets new cleanup firm; Shaw Environmental and Infrastructure and Portage Environmental will replace Bechtel Jacobs at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, Paducah Sun, December 28, 2005
- ↑ Frank Munger (May 23, 2011). "The UCOR era begins in Oak Ridge". Atomic City Underground. Knoxville News Sentinel. Archived from the original on February 16, 2013.
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