Nearly 300 full-time jobs are coming to Pike County through a major expansion of Centrus Energy's uranium enrichment facility in southern Ohio.
The nuclear power producer has committed to investing $1.58 billion in its already-existing Ohio infrastructure, according to JobsOhio, the powerful private firm that pursues projects on the state’s behalf. An additional 1,000 construction workers will be needed for the project.
The American Centrifuge Plant near Piketon is the only current location in the United States where HALEU, or high-assay low-enriched uranium, is in production. HALEU is used in advanced nuclear reactors, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, and is almost entirely commercially sourced from Russia right now.
As of Thursday, neither the state or JobsOhio are handing over any grants or loans for the project, although JobsOhio will be offering talent acquisition services—which could range from candidate marketing to talent advising and sourcing to certain training services.
U.S. Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH) said a focus on talent is a must in this case.
“Nobody has this training, because it’s not really being done in the United States of America right now,” Husted told the Statehouse News Bureau.
Federal and state officials will be in Chillicothe—21 miles from Piketon—Thursday morning, where Centrus will meet with potential candidates for the new positions. There, Pixelle Specialty Solutions ceased all production at the longtime paper mill in August, leaving more than 700 mill workers out of a job.
Pike County had an 7.2% unemployment rate in August, and Ross County's rate was 6.5%. Both are well above Ohio's 5% jobless rate and the national rate of 4.3%.
“I can imagine that when you have a workforce that is well-versed in an industrial, manufacturing setting, that’s a huge advantage for us,” Centrus President and CEO Amir Vexler said. “When you’re hiring somebody that has worked shifts, has worked with wrenches, has had electricians on their site.”
Still, Vexler said nuclear workers need extensive training, whether it's on uranium enrichment or nuclear safety. And they need security clearances, too.
Centrus is already under contract with customers for its expansion, most of them existing U.S. utilities, he said.
The Portsmouth Gas Diffusion Plant began operations in 1954 near Piketon to enrich uranium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program, and later for commercial nuclear reactors. The former United States Enrichment Corporation shut down uranium enrichment at the plant in 2001. USEC went into bankruptcy, but restructured and re-emerged as Centrus Energy Corp.
Two coal-fired facilities, Kyger Creek near Gallipolis and Clifty Creek in Indiana, were built to supply power to it. At the time they were the largest private power plants in the world. Those plants, operated by the Ohio Valley Electric Corporation or OVEC, received subsidies from electric utility customers starting in 2018 and then in the scandal-tainted energy House Bill 6 passed in 2019. But a state law signed in May ended those.
