Significant Inactive Facility at PGDP Site Demolished

WKMS | By Todd Hatton

Published June 27, 2014 at 9:41 AM CDT

Workers at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant are demolishing the last of 32 inactive facilities scheduled for removal as part of cleanup at the PGDP site. The U.S. Department of Energy reports the C-410 Feed Plant will be razed to a slab by this fall, ridding the site of a structure contaminated with asbestos and the low-level radioactive compound uranium hexafluoride, or UF-6. The almost five acre building produced UF-6 and fluorine from 1957 to 1977. DOE Project Manager Rob Seifert calls the demolition significant and says it reduces risks to the environment and the public. The work began in mid-May and is about one-third completed. The Energy Department says the debris is being shipped via railcar to a commercial disposal site.

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Todd Hatton

Todd Hatton hails from Paducah, Kentucky, where he got into radio under the auspices of the late, great John Stewart of WKYX while a student at Paducah Community College. He also worked at WKMS in the reel-to-reel tape days of the early 1990s before running off first to San Francisco, then Orlando in search of something to do when he grew up. He received his MFA in Creative Writing at Murray State University. He vigorously resists adulthood and watches his wife, Angela Hatton, save the world one plastic bottle at a time.

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