By Rebecca Feldhaus
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wkms/local-wkms-901231.mp3
Paducah, KY – When people in the Paducah area discuss "yellowcake," it might not involve any sort of baked good. The confectionery nickname represents uranium's solid form -- a dense yellow powder. Uranium has been part of the Four Rivers region for over 50 years at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant.
The plant, located just within the boarders of McCracken County, near Kevil, began as a weapon-building site for the U-S Nuclear arms program. After World War II, the race for nuclear arms rocketed uranium enrichment plants, like the one in Oak Ridge, Tennessee to heavy production. When U-S nuclear war program officials looked across the country for another plant location, Paducah Kentucky got the nod. Public Relations person for the United States Enrichment Corporation or USEC Georgann Lookofsky says there were suspicions that friends in high places had something to do with it.
"Vice President Alben Barkley was in office at that time, and there's kind of a consensus of opinion that that probably helped sway the decision-making."
Lookofsky says the plans started in 1951 and by January of 1952, thousands of construction workers broke ground. As part of construction needs, an estimated 30-thousand people moved to Paducah, many with families. So many people in such a short amount of time would likely strain any city. Lookofsky explains.
"The schools weren't big enough, Forest Hills which is a whole area of housing in Paducah was built solely in response to the need for additional housing."
Once the plant was finished, Paducah enriched uranium for nuclear arms until the mid 1960s when the plant's mission statement changed from war to energy needs. Many different corporations and departments have leased and operated the plant over the years. Union Carbide stepped in before construction started, in 1950 to operate the plant. Martin Marietta Energy Systems Inc. took over in 1984, and finally, after becoming a privatized company, USEC took over operations in 1999. The Paducah site is currently the only operating enrichment site in the country.
The U-S Department of Energy owns the land and leases the buildings to USEC. The entire property encompasses just under 3,500 acres. 750 of those are the limited acres, protected by tight security, upon which uranium is enriched with business going 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Uranium enrichment is a detailed process. After mining, milling and conversion, the uranium is enriched. This is where the Paducah plant comes in. It takes one of uranium's naturally occurring radioactive isotopes from under one percent to four or five percent - the level required for nuclear reactors. Finally the uranium goes through the fabrication phase and ships to power plants across the nation and the world to light up the grid.
In 1986, workers discovered a chemical leak. A degreaser called trichloroethylene or TCE leaked into the ground at the site. It contaminated the water supply of residents in the area. The DOE has provided clean water to that area since then, and they have high hopes for safe water sometime soon. Joe Tarantino of Paducah Remediation Services is just one of the many employees working to clean up the spill quickly and safely. Tarantino says TCE is more dangerous than previously thought and isn't used very often now because of its carcinogenic effects. The newest technology PRS uses for the ground cleanup is run by a company out of Canada. Basically, it heats up the ground water and the TCE with it, traps the vapor and then separates the TCE from the water. The ground and groundwater must meet specific criteria before being labeled clean.
Working at a plant like Paducah's comes with ample risks. Former boiler-maker Joe Hudson works with people who encounter those risks. He works for the Building and Trades Medical Screening Program run by the Center for the Protection of Worker's Rights. Hudson explains the services offered by the registered non-profit organization.
"The program offers free medical screening for former construction workers, who have performed construction work at any of the Department of Energy facilities."
Hudson says the free medical screenings are extremely thorough because some safety precautions were not upheld as stringently in the 1950s as they are today. Though he emphasizes he's not a physician, Hudson says the health concern he encounters most with his clients is cancer. He explains a construction worker's dilemma.
"We know there's hazardous chemicals. We know we're in a hazardous environment. But we all have families that we have to support and we need a paycheck. If that's where the work is, that's where we're going to work. We feel that if there's going to be medical problems down the road, then I'll deal with them down the road, but right now I need a job. And that's the way we all look at it."
Thomas Emerson is one of those workers. Emerson, a retiree since 1986, worked at the plant for 33 years. One thing that concerns Emerson is the fear nuclear power illicit in many people. Emerson says more information could yield a different reaction.
"I'm grateful I had the opportunity to work out there. You know, I made good money and I may soon be 88 years old and I don't glow in the dark. I appreciated my work."
Emerson says safety was never something he saw as a problem, but others might disagree.
With new precautions and regulations, Georgann Lookofsky assures things are much safer now than back then. Though workers are around uranium, most of them never come in direct contact with the most dangerous kinds.
"We never generated the highly enriched, weapons grade uranium here at Paducah. We always did the very front end of that process."
Lookofsky says once they produced the lower grade uranium, they shipped it to places like Oak Grove to finish the enrichment process. But, isn't any exposure to uranium a risk?
"The enrichment process itself takes place in a closed system. So our exposure to the actual uranium itself is limited significantly by that."
USEC employs approximately twelve hundred people and the Department of Energy adds another thousand workers on top of that. Joe Tarantino says the influence on Paducah's economy is clear.
"The dollar turns over seven or eight times in a community, so it's a large benefit to the revenue and the economic basis for this area."
As an exporter of uranium all around the world, the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant is a globalized part of a local economy. Some rumors circulate that the plant may close within five years, should new centrifuge technology that could cut energy use by 95 percent, come through. Georgann Lookofsky says though there are plans for shutting down the plant, they do not yet have a specific date.