PIKETON, Ohio — The U.S. Department of Energy will run an emergency-response drill Wednesday at its Portsmouth Site, and officials are asking area residents not to be alarmed if they notice added emergency vehicle traffic or personnel around the property.
“This is a drill,” Southern Ohio Cleanup Company said in a Facebook post announcing the July 22 exercise, stressing that it is a planned test rather than a response to an actual emergency.
The Portsmouth Site, a former uranium-enrichment plant in Pike County near Piketon, is overseen by the Portsmouth Paducah Project Office, a Department of Energy division based in Lexington, Kentucky, that manages environmental cleanup at former gaseous diffusion plants in Ohio and Kentucky, according to the Department of Energy. The office operates under DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, which says its work is meant to safely accelerate cleanup while protecting the public and the environment.
According to Southern Ohio Cleanup Company, PPPO’s Emergency Management Teams conduct multiple drills every year simulating real emergencies to confirm that the site’s Emergency Operations Center, Joint Information Center, Fire Department, Pro-Force security personnel and other departments can respond under realistic, spontaneous conditions.
The Department of Energy has previously upgraded both facilities that support that response. The Emergency Operations Center, housed in the site’s X-1020 Building, and the Joint Information Center, located at Miracle City Academy just north of the site, both received new incident-management software used by local government, the state of Ohio and DOE’s Washington, D.C., watch office to speed communication with the public during an actual emergency, according to the Department of Energy.
The information contained in this story was obtained from Southern Ohio Cleanup Company.
