I think they are themselves only coming to understand here that they do not have at this point in time full, accurate information. Piketon's conversion plant turned that material into a gaseous form of uranium that could again be enriched for use in bombs or as nuclear-plant fuel. This area was an oxide-conversion area and is highly radiologically contaminated,'' that report states. Mary Byrd Davis, who heads the Kentucky-based Uranium Enrichment Project, a nuclear watchdog group that uncovered some of the documents provided to The Dispatch, said there is a big difference between handling spent reactor fuel and handling the far more diluted product that already has been converted and initially enriched. What it means is that place was contaminated much more than if the material had just come from Paducah,'' she said.
Enrichment essentially is a purification process.
Herman Potter, safety representative for the union, said the Department of Energy has known for years what happened at Piketon and failed to either monitor the employees who worked in those operations or take care of any health problems they later suffered. They've said a lot of things that weren't quite true,'' he said. Nothing like that surprises me. Potter said he's not sure how many workers toiled amid plutonium-laced uranium. He said he doubts it is possible today to measure long-ago exposure levels or prove that any specific illnesses resulted from those exposures.