Activist : A nuclear facility doesn’t always mean jobs for community
Lois Gibbs visits Pike County
By ASHLEY LYKINS
Chillicothe Gazette Staff Writer

PIKETON — “Nuclear” isn’t synonymous with “jobs,” said one activist in Pike County Saturday night.

A handful of people, including noted author and activist Lois Gibbs, gathered for an intimate town meeting with speakers who touched on topics ranging from the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership to newly discovered earthworks near the Department of Energy reservation.

“Moving (spent nuclear fuel rods) at all is a tremendously risky opportunity for God knows what to happen,” said Mary Olson, director of Nuclear Information and
Resource Service’s southeast office.

One of 11 sites to be chosen for review for GNEP, the Piketon Uranium Enrichment plant could be home to a program officials say will recycle spent fuel rods and convert them to new fuel for nuclear power plants.

Olson called GNEP a magician’s scarf and dove that inherently has an agenda to “stick it to the community.”

If the Energy Department chooses to place the partnership in Piketon, two possible facilities could be built, including an advanced nuclear fuel recycling center, which would separate used nuclear fuel into its reusable and waste components. The other building would be an advanced recycling reactor, which would demolish radioactive aspects of the used fuel while generating electricity.

However, Olson believes the location of Piketon, where she thinks storage of nuclear waste will occur, and the location of Asheville, N.C. — both on U.S. 23 — is indicative of an already planned situation. She said it's possible Asheville would be the reprocessing site while the waste would be brought north to Piketon.

“It makes sense they would think of a storage site here,” she said. “This would be a huge regional impact ... It’s a false construct that nuclear equals jobs.”

Nonetheless, the Southern Ohio Nuclear Integration Cooperative insists the project would be a catalyst to economic development, bringing a mass of jobs to an impoverished region. It has consistently refused that Piketon would become a dumping ground for nuclear waste, noting no nuclear material would be brought in unless the GNEP facilities were constructed.

The cooperative is made up of the Southern Ohio Diversification Initiative, based in Piketon, and the Piketon Initiative for Nuclear Independence, a privately-held group in Cleveland.

Expressing concern, Geoffrey Sea, co-founder of the Southern Ohio Neighbors Group, which opposes GNEP, maintains SONIC didn’t mention any historically significant sites in the area in its study for the partnership, when he said he found a giant earthwork that had been “lost” near the Energy Department reservation.
“No one knew the earthwork was there,” he said, noting it has a 320-feet diameter and it was last photographed in 1930.

Sea said a major entrance road goes over the site, which is currently being surveyed.

“This isn't supposed to happen,” he said. “This is plainly visible by looking at aerial photographs ... There’s no excuse for the atomic agency ... to not know it’s there.”

Gibbs, founder and director of the Center for Health, Environment and Justice, spoke about environmental justice issues Saturday evening. She founded the Love Canal Homeowners Association nearly 30 years ago, when she raised awareness of a chemical dump site's potentially hazardous health threats in Love Canal, N.Y., according to a news release from the Southern Ohio Neighbors Group. She authored “Love Canal: My Story” in 1982 and has another book in the works.

The group compares Piketon resident Tressie Hall, co-founder of Southern Ohio Neighbors Group, to Gibbs because she began organizing people in Pike County in 1989.

“They have acted like they can do absolutely anything here without question or opposition, even making us into a national dumping ground for nuclear waste,” she said in the news release. “We may suffer for lack of education, but we know better than to let this go on the way it has.”