Very misleading to us the waste that was in the X7725 was waste that was shipped here from Fernald and other site that we didn't want here to begin with like ,3,800 metric tons of DU waste. Not sure but some of the waste may have come from the plant but without public participation who knows what was in the buildings. They are in know why cleaning up the site just shifting the waste to some other site the off-site problems of contamintion is not being address to the creek and Ohio River. In 1985 this building house the Centrifuge and was shut down but not before the building was contaminated. It looks like the American Centrifuge might try to test in this building..

PIKETON - The U.S. Department of Energy on Friday said the removal of almost 50,000 barrels of hazardous and radioactive waste from a large building at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant is a major step in the overall cleanup of the plant.

“Our goal, and the community's goal, is the cleanup of this site for future use,” DOE Project Office manager William Murphie said during an outdoor press conference.

About 20,000 tons of waste will be shipped to Utah and Nevada, according to a LATA/Parallax spokesman.

LATA/Parallax is the company DOE contracted for cleanup work at the site.

DOE leases the plant to the United States Enrichment Corp., which plans to begin a commercial uranium enrichment program by the end of the decade.

The building that was cleaned is known as X-7725. USEC plans to build 11,500 centrifuges in the building through its American Centrifuge Program.

The building was constructed in 1983 for the purpose of building centrifuges. But DOE abandoned that purpose in 1985 and began storing hazardous waste in it during the early 1990s.

The total volume of waste removed would cover a football field 14-feet deep.

If the waste containers were stacked end to end, they would extend more than 26 miles into space.

“Environmental work is very complicated,” Ohio Environmental Protection Agency director Chris Korleski said. “But I think anyone can understand the magnitude of this cleanup.”

Portsmouth/Piketon Residents for Environmental Security and Safety President Vina Colley said she couldn't understand why there were no members of the public at the DOE press conference.

“It's seems like they have a closed-door policy,” she said. “They're trying to build a good relationship with the community. But to me, this is another slap in the face.”

While the cleanup was designed to help advance American Centrifuge, some officials are concerned USEC may not be able to finance the project with help from investors or the government.

The New York Times recently detailed USEC's financial problems.

But American Centrifuge director Dan Rogers downplayed the problems and said the program will continue.

“Absolutely,” he said. “This is no different of a challenge that any company has as it's going through a new technology deployment. We have our plans and the processes to go through, and we're going to go through with this project. We feel highly confident that we will be able to deploy on the schedule we've laid out.”

But what if USEC does not find the financial help it needs?

“Again, our financial folks are working the issue,” Rogers said. “I have a high level of confidence there will be no issues with us moving forward with this program.”

Rogers did not say how that would happen without the financing, however.