Questions raised over Paducah nuclear project. Kentucky group pushes for hearing
One of Kentucky’s environmental law and advocacy groups wants to hit pause on the licensing process for a nuclear facility under development in Western Kentucky in order to further review the plan it said is deficient.
The Kentucky Resources Council is petitioning the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and challenging a request from Global Laser Enrichment to license its nearly $2 billion uranium enrichment project in McCracken County.
The petition raises two questions: whether the U.S. Department of Energy has the authority to sell its depleted uranium to a private company and whether the environmental analysis for the facility is sufficient.
The Kentucky Resources Council asks a hearing be held, and the commission resolve the issues before handing the company its license.
Global Laser Enrichment had no comment on the filing of the petition.
“The public deserves a clear answer to the long-standing question of whether DOE even has authority to transfer this material for commercial use, and a legally sufficient, site-specific environmental review of the effects of the handling, transfer, reprocessing, and management of radioactive wastes from the proposed facility,” said Kentucky Resources Council Executive Director Ashley Wilmes in a statement.
A panel of judges on the licensing board may find in the coming weeks after reviewing the petition that the company must do more work or shift its plan in response to contentions brought forward by the council or the petition may be disregarded.
Plan for the Paducah Laser Enrichment Facility
Global Laser Enrichment’s requested license would allow it to construct and then operate a facility that would re-enrich more than 200,000 tons of depleted uranium to create new fuel for nuclear power generation.
The building, called the Paducah Laser Enrichment Facility, would sit on a roughly 665-acre site near the former Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant.
That plant was initially constructed for uranium enrichment in the 1950s for the nuclear weapons program before it was used to produce fuel for commercial power plants. Enrichment ended in 2013, but clean up and remediation has been ongoing since the 1980s, including the conversion of depleted uranium to more stable forms for reuse, disposal and other projects.
Global Laser Enrichment said in March its project would create 240 new, high-wage jobs.
The project is the single-largest capital investment project in Western Kentucky since a previous $1.5 billion investment for a separate uranium enrichment facility in the same area was announced last summer.
DOE’s authority
The company is buying depleted uranium from the Department of Energy through a 2016 contract that will accelerate site cleanup at the former Paducah diffusion plant.
But the Kentucky Resources Council said in its petition the department lacks the congressional authority to sell uranium byproducts to private companies.
A 1996 law that authorized the DOE to market uranium through privately-owned businesses doesn’t also give it the authority to sell enrichment waste, the council’s petition said.
The Government Accountability Office told Congress in 2008 and again in 2022 it needed to clarify the DOE’s role; however, that recommendation remains open and resolved, according to the office’s website.
Regulators have said Congress implied the department could sell uranium when it privatized the marketplace.
Tom FitzGerald, of counsel for the Kentucky Resources Council, told the Herald-Leader there’s still a clarification that needs to be made.
“You don’t imply something as significant as handing off to a private party the management of depleted uranium hexafluoride without saying so,” he said.
In June 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the 40-year precedent requiring federal courts to defer to agency interpretations in disputes involving ambiguous law.
That means, FitzGerald said, “the time has passed” for the DOE to insist it has permission to do something that isn’t strictly spelled out.
“I simply want to make sure that a long-lingering issue regarding the legality of transferring and selling this material is resolved and that all the impacts are considered,” FitzGerald said. “(Especially) for an area that really has paid a disproportionate price for the development of commercial fuel in terms of contaminated groundwater, in terms of workforce, health, in terms of air, land and water emissions.”
Based on a recommendation from the Government Accountability Office, the department of energy has evaluated its options for managing depleted uranium since 2011, including selling it “as is.” The classification means it could be used for industrial rather than military purposes and generally refers to the byproduct of the enrichment process that can be repeated, as Global Laser Enrichment hopes to do.
Environmental review
The group also contends that review of the application for the facility’s license is reliant on tentative conclusions from a generic environmental impact statement instead of a detailed, site-specific review required by federal law.
The nonprofit environmental law and advocacy group has focused on the Paducah site for decades due to its significance as a superfund site on the National Priorities List for contamination of groundwater, soil and surface water with radioactive material and forever chemicals.
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