PIKETON, Ohio — The U.S. Department of Energy has given one of its top employee honors to the team credited with turning the Portsmouth site and two sister facilities into hubs for new nuclear industry investment, the agency said this week.
The Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management and the Portsmouth Paducah Project Office Reindustrialization Team received the Secretary of Energy Achievement Award during a Secretary’s Honor Awards ceremony, according to DOE. The team includes federal and contractor staff working across the Portsmouth site in Piketon, the Oak Ridge site in Tennessee and the Paducah site in Kentucky. Energy Secretary Chris Wright presented the award, the department said.
DOE credited the team with transforming the three former uranium enrichment sites into what the agency calls “American Energy Hubs,” attracting billions of dollars in private investment and creating thousands of jobs in communities that have hosted federal nuclear operations for decades, according to the department.
John Patterson, president and CEO of Strata-G, a Knoxville, Tennessee-based government and commercial services contractor, accepted the award on behalf of the team.
The recognition comes as the Portsmouth site has drawn a wave of new nuclear development activity, including Centrus Energy’s federally backed expansion to build uranium enrichment centrifuges and a broader push to redevelop the Piketon site as a new energy megasite.
It was one of seven Secretary’s Honor Awards DOE announced. Other recipients were honored for work at the Hanford Site in Washington and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, and for an agreement that brought enriched uranium fuel material to the U.S. from Japan, according to the department.
The information contained in this story was obtained from the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management.
