President's budget kind to Piketon cleanup

PIKETON - Could 2016 be the year that officials involved with the cleanup of the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon will not face an end-of-the-year scramble for funds?

U.S. Sens. Sherrod Brown and Rob Portman, who have been at the forefront of the Ohio congressional delegation's efforts in recent years to secure adequate funding to keep the cleanup work on track, certainly hope so. Tuesday afternoon, both touted a provision in President Obama's Fiscal Year 2017 budget proposal that includes $322 million for the decontamination and decommissioning work in Piketon.

According to a presentation from DOE Assistant Secretary Monica Regalbuto on Tuesday afternoon, priorities for those funds will include completing the deactivation of one of the three large process buildings on the site in preparation for demolition and completion of Phase One infrastructure work on an on-site waste disposal site.

All told, the president's budget includes $6.1 billion for Environmental Management to address issues across the country tied to cleaning up the nuclear legacy left behind by the Cold War. Regalbuto said this was the largest Environmental Management budget request in the last five years.

The amount proposed for the 2017 fiscal year that begins Oct. 1 is more than 10 percent higher than what was actually put in place for operations this year after a protracted battle over funding that resulted in WARN notices of potential layoffs being sent out late last year at the Piketon plant. Layoffs were averted with the passage of a $1.1 trillion federal Omnibus funding bill at the end of December that included enough funding for work to continue uninterrupted this year, with the exception of a $13.3 million shortfall in expected funding for construction of the on-site waste disposal cell.

"The redevelopment of Piketon is critical to the future of southern Ohio, and I am encouraged that the president's budget proposal would ensure that cleanup at the site continues at its current pace and jobs are maintained," Brown said. "While the proposal is encouraging, we owe it to the community, the workers and their families to look for ways to fund the project long-term and increase Piketon's workforce to accelerate cleanup."

Brown's statement echoes a cry that has gone out late during budget cycles in recent years as the battle has been waged to secure adequate funding for only the following year. Members of the congressional delegation, plant and local government officials and United Steel Workers local union leadership have been pushing for a more stable funding situation relying more on consistent government appropriations and less on a uranium barter program that presently makes up about 70 percent of all project funds. The amount of uranium permitted to be sold from the site's uranium inventory to help pay for the cleanup was trimmed back last year when Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz expressed concern over the impact the barter program may be having on the commercial uranium market.

With income from the barter program affected by price fluctuations in the uranium market and a limited amount of uranium in the site's inventory, those associated with the cleanup have argued for more reliance on budget appropriations to accelerate the cleanup and provide a more consistent funding formula.

Portman's reaction to the president's budget proposal was a bit more mixed than Brown's, starting with his disappointment that the proposal is not a balanced budget. That mixed reaction carried over into discussion of the Piketon funding.

"I'm pleased that the administration has responded to requests of the Ohio delegation by potentially providing adequate resources for cleanup work at (Piketon), but I am disappointed that the administration has not provided any resources for the American Centrifuge Plant," Portman said. "The cleanup project (in Piketon) is an important component to economic development in southern Ohio, and ACP is critical for our national and energy security. We still need the administration to ensure full funding is delivered for cleanup (in Piketon), but proposing these resources (for Piketon) is a positive step forward."

The American Centrifuge Plant was defunded at the end of the last budget year, with DOE deciding to shift available resources to continue development of the centrifuge technology to Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Centrus Energy, which operates the plant on DOE land in Piketon, has been keeping the facility going with its own funds while trying to find another use for the plant that would keep jobs there.

U.S. Rep. Brad Wenstrup was very critical of the administration's decision not to spend on the Centrifuge the money set aside for uranium enrichment activities this year and its failure to include the Centrifuge in the Fiscal Year 2017 request.

“This project is a national security imperative to ensure we have a continued domestic supply of enriched uranium to support our nuclear-powered navy and nuclear based assets,” Wenstrup continued. “It is shameful for the Obama Administration to walk away from this longstanding investment, leaving southern Ohio and the nation with another broken promise from this administration.”

The president's budget proposal is simply that, a proposal designed to help set the parameters for budget negotiations. There is no guarantee the amounts included in it will be the same after Congressional budget plans are unveiled and negotiated into a final 2017 budget that will go back to the president for his signature.

Officials with Fluor-BWXT, the lead site contractor for the cleanup work in Piketon, were unable to comment on the budget request by press time.