The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Construction plans have been approved and work should begin soon on plants in Ohio and Kentucky that will recycle low-level nuclear waste into a more stable form, the U.S. Energy Department announced this week.

The Ohio plant will be built at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon and be operational by 2007. A sister facility will be constructed at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Kentucky.

Piketon's plant is expected to handle about 20,931 cylinders, or 260,100 tons, of depleted uranium over the next 18 years. About 38,000 cylinders will be processed in Kentucky.

The Ohio plant, which once enriched uranium for weaponry and later for use in nuclear fuel, was closed in 2001 when operations were consolidated to Paducah.

A $1.5 billion facility to enrich uranium using a new technology is expected to be completed at Piketon by 2010.

The recycling plant being built at Piketon will convert spent uranium hexafluoride from the plant's former enrichment operations, which is being stored in thousands of cylinders sitting in outdoor yards, into more stable material for storage, use or disposal.

It also will process cylinders of nuclear waste from the Energy Department's facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn.

"We've been managing them safely and would continue to, but now there will be a permanent solution," said Laura Schachter, an Energy Department spokeswoman.

The new factory is expected to generate about 190 construction jobs and employ 150 full-time workers once it goes on line, said Rep. Rob Portman, a Cincinnati Republican whose district includes the plant.

Uranium Disposition Services, based in Oak Ridge, has a $558 million contract to build both the plants and run them for at least five years, after which UDS will bid for continued work.