From: Kentucky Environmental Matters

US DOE’s Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant

The Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant (PGDP) is located approximately 10 miles west of Paducah, Kentucky, and 3 miles south of the Ohio River. PGDP is owned and operated by the Department of Energy (DOE.) It was constructed from 1951 to 1954. DOE enriched uranium at the plant from 1952 to 1993. At that time, Congress transferred production of enriched uranium from DOE to the United States Enrichment Corporation (USEC). DOE assumed the role of landlord with an environmental cleanup mission. Bechtel Jacobs Company LLC is currently DOE’s management and integration contractor, with responsibility for environmental remediation, waste management, and management of depleted uranium hexafluoride.

From fiscal year 1988 through 2003, DOE spent $823 million (in 2002 dollars) at the Paducah site. Of this total, DOE spent about $372 million (45 percent) for a host of operations activities, including general maintenance and security; $298 million (36 percent) for actions to clean up contamination and waste; and $153 million (19 percent) for studies to assess the extent of contamination and determine what cleanup actions were needed. DOE currently projects that the cleanup will take until 2019 and cost almost $1.6 billion to complete - 9 years and about $300 million more than DOE’s earlier projection.
The $1.6 billion, however, does not include the cost of other DOE activities required at the site after the plant ceases operations, including final decontamination and decommissioning of the plant and long-term environmental monitoring. DOE estimates these activities will cost almost $5 billion and bring DOE’s total costs at the site, including the $823 million already spent, to over $7 billion through 2070 (in 2002 dollars). [...]” See United States General Accounting Office: Nuclear Waste Cleanup: DOE Has Made Some Progress in Cleaning Up the Paducah Site, but Challenges Remain, Report to Congressional Committees, GAO-04-457, April 1, 2004. Download full report (927k PDF). U.S. EPA’s second five-year review of the CERCLA cleanup of the PGDP will begin in 2008.