Uranium enrichment began in the United States as part of the World War II Manhattan Project to produce nuclear weapons. The first uranium enrichment operations were set up at what is now the Oak Ridge Nat’l. Laboratory (Tennessee) in 1942. In the 1950’s the U.S. government set up two additional enrichment plants, in Paducah in 1952 and in Piketon, Ohio.
The major technology used at Oak Ridge for the weapons program was gaseous diffusion. The Paducah and Piketon plants also were gaseous diffusion plants. USW and its predecessor unions have represented workers at all three sites from early on.
DOE requested in 2018 a change in its operating permit to allow it to count the volume of nuclear waste itself instead of the volume of the waste drum. Doing so would mean the underground salt repository would be a third full instead of half full.
Jim Key, chair of the USW Atomic Energy Workers Council, and Duronda Pope, the USW Emergency Response Program director, sit on the board with two others representing claimants.
Brown has spent more than two decades in our Washington, D.C., legislative office, spearheading work on procurement, energy and environmental regulation. This includes heading our union’s atomic sector and participating in our upcoming oil bargaining.
The board’s composition reflects the Biden administration’s focus on clean energy and climate jobs, as well as the rest of DOE’s mission, including nuclear security and waste cleanup.
The Worker Health Protection Program (WHPP) is a program sponsored by the Dept. of Energy to detect and address health problems of DOE workers.
As of November 2012 Local unions at most USW nuclear sites in the United States are active in USW’s Atomic Energy Workers’ Council (AEWC). Several others are not involved currently.
Uranium enrichment began over 70 years ago in the United States and for most of those years the United Steelworkers and its predecessor unions have represented workers at American sites.
