What should Tristaters make of a list of 577 government and private sites — including nearly two dozen in Greater Cincinnati — that may have handled radioactive materials for nuclear weapons development sometime over the past 50 years?

        It's something to be aware of, but not panicked about, U.S. Department of Energy officials say.

        The department last month released the 5-year-old list of 577 national sites its records indicate might have been involved in nuclear weapons activities.

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Tristate sites linked to nuclear weapons program

        But DOE cautions not all sites on the list were involved in nuclear weapons production or contaminated with radioactive materials.

        And some that were, including three in the Tristate, have been cleaned up.

        The list, posted at www2.em.doe.gov/sitelist, is a work in progress and will be updated as the DOE gets more information on the sites.

        Publication of the list is part of the Clinton adminis tration's effort to win congressional approval for legislation to compensate people who became sick from working in the nation's nuclear weapons complex.

        Posting of the list coincided with recent testimony by Energy Secretary Bill Richardson before a House Judiciary subcommittee urging action on the measure.

        It would benefit former workers at Fernald in western Hamilton County, the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in southeastern Ohio and the Paducah Gas eous Diffusion Plant in Kentucky.

        That effort was dealt a setback last week when congressional negotiators reached an impasse and deleted compensation for weapons-plant workers from a military spending bill.

        “The secretary wants to be candid with any workers who may have been exposed to some contamination,” a DOE spokeswoman said.

        Still, that has some officials of the companies on the list scratching their heads, since their sites were classi fied as “eliminated.”

        Edward Paul, 51, is the third-generation president of family-owned Queen City Barrel in Lower Price Hill.

        “The only thing we did was sell drums to Fernald,” he said.

        Over the years, contractors that ran Fernald bought thousands of reconditioned industrial drums from Queen City Barrel and other suppliers. Eventually, many of those aging, waste-filled drums were hauled away as part of a multibillion-dollar cleanup of the site. Even now, Queen City Barrel sells about 3,500 new drums a year to Fernald.

        Queen City Barrel was one of eight Cincinnati sites on the list whose status was described as “eliminated,” meaning it was not found to be contaminated under the screening criteria previously used.

        In most cases, these sites either were determined to have never received radioactive materials or were found to have no higher than acceptable levels of radioactivity because only small quantities were handled or kept on site.

        Also among the local sites listed as eliminated were:

        • Fosdick Machine Shop in Oxford.

        • The former Lodge and Shipley machine tool plant in Camp Washington.

        • American Steel Foundries in Bond Hill.

        • The old Gruen Watch Co. in Norwood.

        • DuBois Chemical Co. in Cincinnati.

        • Process Research Inc. in Cincinnati.

        • The former John Von Range Co. in Cincinnati.

        Greg Hand, spokesman for the University of Cincinnati, also on the list, said the university's radiation safety office is still trying to determine why it was included.

        “Some people here were involved in the Manhattan Project, but UC's contribution was mainly mathematics,” he said. “Or it might have something to do with some minor nuclear power research done here in the late 1950s.”

        The DOE says it is still trying to figure out which sites need to be cleaned up.

        “We are reconstructing the history of these former and present sites to see if questions remain about contamination,” said Carolyn Huntoon, who oversees cleanup issues for the agency.

        “In the near future, we expect to have a more thorough and comprehensive list and a plan for addressing health and environmental concerns,” she told the Associated Press.

        Several local companies on the list were machine tool makers, one of Cincinnati's oldest indus tries. It would be no surprise to find Fernald and every other weapons plant in the United States used some tools made by Cincinnati Milling Machine, now Cincinnati Machine, or LeBlond Machine Tool, now Makino Inc.

        It is unlikely those companies' sites are contaminated or their workers ever handled radioactive materials, said Jeff Wagner, a spokesman for Fluor Fernald. That is the unit of the giant Fluor Daniel company that is managing the Fernald cleanup.

        There were situations that involved taking radioactive materials to contractor production sites for tests. For example, in 1960, Fernald officials shipped some of its waste to Bendix Aviation in Iowa to test a decontamination process.

        “We took all the residue back with us,” Mr. Wagner said. (The Bendix plant, in Davenport, was on the list of 577 national sites but subsequently was eliminated.)

        Mr. Wagner said he did not know whether Cincinnati machine tool makers were exposed in similar types of testing situations.

        Part of the problem for those overseeing the Fernald site today is trying to re-create the records of which subcontractors did what decades ago.

        A fire in 1961 destroyed many records, and Fernald used to have a policy of destroying records more than 5 years old, officials said. They've assembled a team of former employees who are trying to re-create a subcontractor list.

        Three companies on the local list have been known for years to be subcontractors for the weapons industry. The government already has spent millions cleaning up those sites.

        Those include:

        • $4 million on cleanup at Alba Craft Laboratories in Oxford, which machined several hundred tons of uranium metal.

        • $1 million to clean up the former Diebold Safe Co. in Hamilton.

        • $3 million for Force Control Industries, a Fairfield machine shop once known as Associate Aircraft Tool and Manufacturing Co. It cut uranium rods in the 1940s for the Manhattan Project, the secret program that produced the world's first atomic bomb.

Tristate sites linked to nuclear weapons program

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