Kentucky environmental attorney Sanders says first shipment of radioactive PCBs from Kentucky Gaseous Diffusion Plant goes to Perma-Fix plant in Kingston, TN.

Perma-Fix Environmental Services, Inc. is a waste management company that provides nuclear and industrial waste management services, as well as environmental engineering and consulting services to government, industrial and commercial customers. The company is based in Atlanta, Georgia, and has six major waste treatment and processing facilities across the United States.

 

Perma-Fix has three major business segments: Nuclear, Industrial and Engineering. The Nuclear Services Segment provides radioactive, hazardous and mixed waste services to hospitals, research laboratories, institutions, nuclear utilities and numerous Federal agencies including the Departments of Energy and Defense. Nuclear Services operates four RCRA permitted, radioactive licensed treatment facilities, providing treatment and disposal of radioactive, hazardous and mixed wastes. It also provides on-site treatment services, analytical services, and consulting services. 

 

U.S. EPA issued Perma-Fix a permit to commercially store and dispose of radioactive Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCB’s) at its disposal facility located in Kingston, Tennessee.  The Kingston disposal facility uses a waste fuel boiler unit for the thermal destruction of radioactive and mixed (radioactive and hazardous) liquids and semi-solid wastes.

 

On April 22, Perma-Fix received 940 gallons of radioactive PCB liquids from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant which is located in Kevil, KY. This mixed hazardous waste from Kentucky’s Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant is the first shipment of radioactive PCBs under the permit issued by EPA.   The company is on the web at: http://www.perma-fix.com.

 

Kingston, Tennessee is also the home of TVA’s billion gallon sludge pond collapse that made the news earlier this year. EPA found high levels of arsenic and heavy metals in two rivers in central Tennessee that are near the site of a spill that unleashed more than a billion gallons of coal waste.  In 2003, Kingston’s estimated population was 5,327.