The nickel was salvaged from machinery once used to enrich uranium for use in nuclear weapons and power plants. The Energy Department acknowledged that some of the decontaminated scrap could end up in consumer products, though it said that was unlikely. The amount is equal to an entire year of government cleanup money at Paducah. But groups including scrap metal dealers, environmentalists and labor unions have criticized the plan. A resolution from the plant's community advisory board also opposed selling the radioactive metal, which tests have shown contains traces of plutonium and technetium.
Most radioactivity is on the surface of the metal and can be scrubbed off.
But the nickel ingots have radioactivity embedded throughout. That presents a far greater technical challenge, although one company says it has a process for removing much of the internal radiation. Tennessee regulators have approved a plan to sell some contaminated nickel from the Oak Ridge, Tenn., diffusion plant. But Kentucky regulators have questioned the Paducah plan, and the Paducah metal recycling project was split off from the Drum Mountain project after Kentucky regulators raised concerns, said Greg Cook, a spokesman for plant cleanup contractor Bechtel Jacobs. In a Sept. 15 letter to the Energy Department, Kentucky environmental officials insisted that the contents of the scrap yards be fully identified before any material was removed.