If you’re looking for plutonium or enriched uranium in the United States and you’re not interested in the thousands of spare plutonium pits the government is storing, or the plutonium in the thousands of deployed nuclear weapons the United States maintains, then there is really only one place to go.
After all, that other plutonium is used, ahem, pre-owned. It’s not likely to turn up in a government auction, either. But since there are a lot fewer warheads deployed now, that used plutonium has to go somewhere.
Buts let’s say you were were shopping for new plutonium, like the Bush Administration.
Fresh plutonium, made from enriched uranium. Enriched in a gaseous diffusion plant. In the United States, lately there’s one place to go. We hope.
"The Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Paducah, Kentucky, is the only operating uranium enrichment facility in the United States. Owned by the U.S. Department of Energy, it is leased and operated by the United States Enrichment Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of USEC Inc. The plant employs about 1,400 people and produces low-enriched uranium fuel for commercial nuclear power plants in the United States and around the world." USEC
"A uranium processing plant in Paducah, Ky., spread plutonium farther around the facility than was previously known and even contaminated ground water in the area, according to newly released documents.Maps drawn last summer but not released to federal investigators reveal that plant officials had taken hundreds of measurements over 10 years showing plutonium in soil and water more than a mile from the plant’s fence. Most disturbing was the discovery of elevated levels of the highly dangerous metal in dozens of ground-water tests.
The results of these tests suggest that government contractors knew far more about the extent of the contamination than was previously acknowledged, and the spread of plutonium was much more extensive than Energy Department officials reported after an investigation last fall." (Washington Post, Oct 1, 2000) emphasis added
The plant has changed hands more than a few times as well.
Carbide and Chemicals Company (which became Union Carbide Corporation Nuclear Division) was named as the original site contractor based on the company’s experience with gaseous diffusion operations at Oak Ridge. Carbide operated PGDP for the AEC, and its successor agencies the Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA) and DOE, until 1984, when they were replaced through a competitive procurement by Martin Marietta Energy Systems, Inc.
In July 1993, the United States Enrichment Corporation, through Congressional legislation, became responsible for uranium enrichment operations at PGDP. Although the plant is now leased and operated by US Enrichment Corporation, environmental restoration and related waste management activities associated with past practices will be conducted by the Department of Energy. However, under the provisions of the lease, future plant shut down and cleanup activities will be the responsibility of US Enrichment Corporation. globalsecurity.org
Is that clear enough to everyone?
It seems pretty clear that that Paducah, which is right over the river from Metropolis, Illinois, and at the confluence of the Ohio and Tennessee Rivers, and which has made the land radioactive for miles around, will not be cleaned up any time soon.
show how close it is to the rivers…
Thanks, you’re right…
I grew up a few miles from this site, unfortunately I never knew it was there untill my 21st birthday. I´ve done a few in-depth research projects since 95 after it was revealed under Clinton that intentional releases were conducted (Human radiation experiments). I´ve often wondered why so many children and teens in our schools were so ill and had severe skin disorders (acne), years later I began to question my own situation and still am waiting for something hideous to occur. I curse this site and the government for it´s typical behaviour and practice of deceit. Now I live as far away as possible, in Europe, well we have France next door, so what the heck.
Have fun frying. Hope the folks
there like “Heavy Metal”.
Ahhhh Plutonium, so poisonous so
rare so much fun at parties.
I like how they brought in the people from Oak Ridge to run the place, they’d done such a GREAT job there…
Such a beautiful glow at night though. the chirping of the crickoids, and the fish, mmmm it tastes like government.
I grew up across the river from Paducah. Shame you people aren’t up in arms instead of sucking that govt. money.. BH
Actually there was a news article within the last…say four years about how people in Paducah saw the infamous “nuclear blue” glow coming from a pit area at Paducah. It seems that when the local plant was advised of this, they merely had the workers put another couple of feet dirt on the area.
I was told that the Nuclear Blue glow indicates that some kind of reaction is happening…obviously at the burial pit.
As I recall the Paducah newspaper is the one that carried the article.
glowing cheers,
^What you said about the “Nuclear Blue glow” is impossible, mate.
That blue glow you see when you look at pictures of looking in nuclear reactors is called Cherenkov Radiation.
http://nscr.tamu.edu/images/reactorcore.jpg
This blue glow is not a result of magic or anything. In water light travels slower than in air. That is why when you put a pencil in the water it looks like the pencil has been bent. Nuclear Reactions are exciting, violent processes after which material is thrown out very quickly. Sometimes, light particles like electrons can be thrown out at speeds faster than the speed of light in water! That blue glow is the electrons as they slow down to a more reasonable speed.
However, since the speed of light in a vacuum/air is the ultimate speed limit, nothing can travel faster than light in air (this is from Einstein’s relativity work). Therefore, since nothing can travel faster than light in the air, Cherenkov Radiation cannot be produced.
Even the idea of “glowing green” is not true either. It comes from old glow-in-the-dark watchs and movies. In the old days watch hands and numbers used to be painted with a paint made with radium and phosphors. As the radium decayed, it excited the phosphors (the same stuff that reacts to black lights) and gave off the trademark green glow.
Without the phosphors nearby we would see nothing. As radioactive elements decay, they may also emit gamma radiation (which is a fancy term for a type of light we can’t see). While too much exposure to gamma radiation is dangerous, like light it disperses. Can you read with a 60W light bulb across a field? No, but you can if it is 3 feet away. Same deal, the amount of gamma radiation you receive from some spent fuel is decreased by your distance from the fuel and greatly decreased by piling alot of dirt on it.
Hopefully this helps dispell some myths about nuclear power.
Maybe those interested in the Paducah Plant should ask the three whistleblowers what the REAL story is. Sixty Minutes considered doing this — and then, for some unknown reason (??) backed out.
Paducah and the residents of western Kentucky have been victimized by more than the DOE. The local (privately owned) press and televisions stations, redneck mafia, Country Club set who want to protect thie land investments in the area and most of the regional medical professionals are all part of an enormous health problem that is being covered up.
And lest anyone think this is a contained catastrophe, think again: The effects of this disaster reach all the way to New Orleans thanks to the Paducah plant’s proximity to the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.
And, while on this subject… plutonium is not all the DOE has hidden beneath the ground in Paducah. Huge amounts of mercury, agent orange,etc are leaking into the groundwater and on into the nation’s major water supplies.
For more information on the faschist regime that oversees this tragedy and continues to hide the truth from the world and American public, check out the DOE site HUMAN RADIATION EXPERIMENTS. The Nazis’ medical experiment pale by comparison. ANONYMOUS FOR A REASON
^Your response is anonymous because you are a conspiracy theorist who are scared about something that doesn’t exist. Support your claims with real evidence.
Anyone have a pic of a 3 eyed fish?
During the fall and winter of 1978 I visited my father in Reidland KY, just outside of Paducah. One night at about 3 a.m., along with my brothers (one of whom wrote a comment above) and stepmother, I was awakened. I was 23 years old at the time and perfectly sober. We awoke to the sound of an unusual helicopter convoy. Rather than make a whapping sound, the choppers made a smooth whirring sound. We got up from various bedrooms and proceeded to the southwest window of my bedroom, where we saw three medium sized choppers passing in the darkness. They had unusually wide rotor blades (18″ to 2′ wide) and were flying just 100-200 feet above treetops to the rear of my father’s property. They sported red, white and green navigation lights.
The strange part of the incident was that we all felt spongy, mentally slowed, while watching. Our minds were affected by some kind of electromagnetic emitter. To put it methaphorically, it was as though our minds were walking with moon boots on: slowed and slightly numb. We watched but exchanged few words, then went to bed. Oddly enough, no one mentioned the sighting the next day. The reason we said nothing was because we had all felt slightly disoriented while watching the helicopter convoy, hence we didn’t think to verbalize the next day. The strange and (personally) unprecedented character of the event made me hesitant to recall or discuss the incident, although I do recall thinking that it was most unusual, even though it was clearly helicopters. Years later, I asked my brother about his recollection of the event. The memory is photo clear in all its details. My brother had, by then, served in W. Germany with Army Intelligence for about 4 years before he quit (disillusioned at the coarse character and Machiavellian, pro-nuke outlook of some career soldiers). He recalled the helicopter passing at the same location, angle and height of incidence that I did–just out the windows to the rear of the house above the trees in the wee hours of the morning, the same spongy, slightly slowed sense of time.
Knowing what I now know, I assume the following occurred: The convoy was likely carrying refined plutonium in a northwesterly direction to a trans-shipment point, hence an electrogravity “field” of sorts was broad beamed outward to discourage witnesses from verbalizing about the (presumably plutonium-carrying) convoy. The choppers flew low and had large rotors to allow for a soft landing in the event of a power failure, thus preventing radioactive spillage. The choppers apparently used electrogravity to marginally slow the thought processes of casual witnesses, given the bomb security nature of the cargo. The cognitive slowing effect didn’t eliminate consciousness or memory, but it was sufficient to make the experience seem truly odd. My stepmother was a nurse and major in the Army Reserve, at the time. Given her duties, she was probably reluctant to discuss what we’d seen. My brothers were about 10 and 13 years old at the time.
At ret. Navy Col Tom Bearden explains “electrogravity” borrows energy from space-time such that it can marginally speed or slow the flow of time in the surrounding continuum. Bearden calls this delta t. Bearden rewrites Einstein’s E=mc2 to read E=delta tc2. In other words, in electrogravity theory, mass is interchangeable with delta t. This has to do with a deeper dimensioning of wave function, its more universal character. As a result of the choppers’ broad beam of electrogravity (produced by destructively interfering light waves so that they cancel out at certain frequencies, thus bleeding into electrogravity), we felt slowed and slightly numbed, although we remained awake and observant. To accomplish the effect, the convoy had to broad beam electrogravity out across at least a hundred yard swath along both sides of its route. In other words, it marginally slowed the passage of time where it was “focused,” so to speak, because it marginally sped the flow of time in the empty space from which it borrowed energy (due to a conservation of sorts). This kind of phsyics is called condensed state physics, i.e. when light is slowed to a stop, or in Bose Einstein condensates, and in “dark states.”
For those unfamiliar with electrogravity, read Bearden and also see the Jan 2000 Scientific American article, “Negative Energy, Wormholes and Warp Drive,” which points to possible future uses of electrogravity, which is based on negative energy. Negative energy is produced when light waves are converged to cancel out, producing “squeezed state fluctuations in the vacuum of space-time,” or negative energy (the basis of electrogravity and much of the condensed state physics of our time).
DUMB ASS! Stay in Europe!
what an idiot. there are so many powerlines around the plant that a helicopter couldn’t even think about flying that low enough to land at the plant.
I lived in Lone Oak for 12 years and my father worked at the gaseous diffusion pland that whole time (1955-1966)
and the amount of radioactive crap he was exposed and brought home on his clothes to expose every one in the family
a government travestry