By SHELLEY TERRY
Staff Writer
sterry@starbeacon.com
ASHTABULA TOWNSHIP - - Clean up is complete at the former RMI plant at 1601 E. 21st St., just east of Route 11, officials at Lata-Sharp Remediation Services and the Ohio Department of Health said Friday.
Since 1998, about $139 million was spent to clean up this seven-acre site. RMI owns 13 of 25 buildings and the Department of Energy owns the remaining 12.
The site supported titanium extrusion operations from 1962 to 1988 for the Department of Energy defense programs.
"There was radioactive contamination left behind," said Clyde Gaston, spokesman for Lata-Sharp. "We removed soil and buildings, but there's still a lot of work to finish up, including paperwork."
This is the Department of Energy's third cleanup this year in Ohio, according to James Rispoli, the Department of Energy's assistant secretary for environmental management.
"The Ashtabula site will be returned to beneficial commercial reuse in Ohio," he said. "This is another example of the department's commitment to safely clean up it's Cold War-era nuclear waste sites across the country."
Lata-Sharp was awarded the contract in September 2005 and work began three months later. The Department of Energy's goal was to return this site to it's owner, RMI Titanium Company, once all regulatory requirements were done.
Throughout the past 10 months, Lata-Sharp excavated more than 1 million cubic feet of low level and mixed low level waste from the site, removed all contaminated underground utilities, and demolished more than a dozen contaminated structures, company officials said.
Bret Atkins of the Ohio Department of Health on Friday confirmed that the physical clean-up of the site is complete.
Operating Engineers Local 18, Laborers Local 245, and Teamsters Local 377, and several subcontractors helped Lata-Sharp with the cleanup, Gaston said.
HISTORY OF THE SITE
In 1962, the Atomic Energy Commission (ATE) located it's 3,850-ton extrusion press and equipment to several empty buildings in Ashtabula, owned by Reactive Metals Inc.
For the next 26 years, the AEC (which later became the DOE) contracted with Reactive Metals (later, RMI), to manufacture metallic uranium tubes, rods, and forged uranium parts for the Cold War nuclear weapons program.
During it's peak production years, the Extrusion Plant provided stable employment for 138 area residents.
RMI obtained a NRC license for it's non-DOE uranium work, which must be terminated by remediation of the site.
In 1988, the need for Cold War weapons production diminished and the DOE began closing it's nuclear weapons production facilities, including the RMI Extrusion Plant.
The 26 years of processing uranium contaminated most of the Extrusion Plant buildings, area soil, and some of the groundwater with uranium, technetium-99 (a fission product from recycled reactor material), and some other non-radioactive hazardous chemicals.
Soon after the closing of the Extrusion Plant, the site mission became Decontamination and Decommissioning (D&D).
- - according to the Ohio Department of Energy's web site.
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