Leadership from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management recently visited the Portsmouth Site in Piketon to review the accelerating pace of cleanup work that is clearing the way for the site’s reuse as an energy and industrial hub, the Department of Energy said in a release. The Scioto Valley Guardian also reported the tour by Assistant Secretary Tim Walsh on Oct. 27.
Led by Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management Tim Walsh, the visit highlighted how dismantling former Cold War-era uranium enrichment facilities and remediating legacy soil and groundwater is the foundation for transforming the 3,400-acre Pike County site, according to the Department of Energy release.
“We met with building trades and United Steelworkers to talk about how we can continue to accelerate our cleanup mission here to make space for new economic opportunities built and operated by American union labor,” Walsh said in the Department of Energy release. “More than $33 billion of investment is coming to this site to create the Portsmouth American Energy Hub. Both the local community and the building trades are excited about what is coming here and the tremendous possibilities for the future.”
The Department of Energy said a central part of the multi-day itinerary was direct engagement with the local workforce and community. Leadership met with frontline personnel, craft workers and union representatives to discuss project milestones, operational safety and the future transition of the site as new jobs are created, the release said.
The Portsmouth Site, the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant near Piketon, enriched uranium for decades before enrichment operations ended. The cleanup mission there has for years focused on tearing down process buildings and addressing contaminated soil and groundwater so portions of the property can return to productive use.
For Pike County and the surrounding southern Ohio counties, the stakes of that cleanup are economic as much as environmental. Federal officials say the planned Portsmouth American Energy Hub is intended to build on the cleared land, bringing energy generation and industrial development to a region that has waited through a long decommissioning timeline.
The Department of Energy said cleanup work at the site is actively clearing the path for that future reuse. No completion date for the hub was announced in the release, and NewsForce247 will follow the cleanup milestones and the hub’s development as further federal announcements are made.