University of Kentucky researchers have begun public meetings aimed at starting a dialogue about the future of thousands of acres of federal land where a plant sits that is now used to enrich uranium.
"There's too much information to present in a single night," Ted Grossardt, a UK research program manager, told the 50 people who showed up Monday at West Kentucky Community & Technical College. Future meetings have been scheduled.
The researchers have set up a website, www.paducahvision.com, where some 16 years of research information about the land has been posted for public review, according to The Paducah Sun.
The researchers said that when the 3,400 acres of land housing the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, 15 miles west of Paducah, is finally cleaned up, it has numerous potential uses. Uranium is reprocessed at the plant and enriched for use as nuclear fuel.
In the future, as a site for a large business or manufacturing facility, the land could bring high-paying jobs to Paducah, the researchers said.
Some possibilities that were outlined, included facilities such as:
— A Hopkinsville Wal-Mart distribution center that hired 1,000 people and pays them $32,000 annually. The PGDP acreage is comparable to the distribution center's acreage.
— A nuclear plant, on a similar footprint in North Carolina, pays about $80,000 to its employees, Grossardt and fellow researcher Lindell Ormsbee said.
"Using the area for a biomass (alternative energy plant) would be more feasible," Ormsbee said.
The problem would be razing the plant's buildings and disposing the contaminated soil and water on and around the area.
The researchers said about 2,000 acres was contaminated with radioactive Technetium-99 and toxic Trichloroethylene, which were part of the plant's daily operations.
It would cost about $500 million to bury the razed buildings and contaminated soil and water, the researchers said, or about $1 billion to ship those out of state.
According to the website, the plant, run by the U.S. Energy Corp., employs 1,200 workers and has an annual payroll of $121 million. The DOE also employs workers at the facility — about 900 — with an annual payroll of approximately $93 million, the website says.
___
Information from: The Paducah Sun, http://www.paducahsun.com
