Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant
Coordinates: 37°06′50″N 88°48′37″W / 37.11389°N 88.81028°W
The Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant is a facility located in McCracken County, Kentucky, near Paducah, Kentucky that produced enriched uranium 1952–2013. The plant is now owned by United States Enrichment Corporation, a subsidiary of USEC Incorporated, a publicly traded corporation (NYSE: USU). It was the only operating uranium enrichment facility in the United States in the period 2001–2010. The Paducah plant produced low-enriched uranium, originally as feedstock for military reactors and weapons refining and later for nuclear power fuel.
The gaseous diffusion plant covers 750 acres (300 ha) of a 3,425 acres (1,386 ha) site. The four process buildings cover 74 acres (30 ha), and consume a peak electrical demand of 3,040 megawatts.
The Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant ceased operations in 2013 and was handed back to the Department of Energy for decontamination and decommissioning.
The former Kentucky Ordnance Works site was chosen from a candidate list of eight sites in 1950. The construction contractor was F.H. McGraw of Hartford, Connecticut and the operating company was Union Carbide. The plant was opened in 1952 as a government-owned, contractor-operated facility producing enriched uranium to fuel military reactors and for use in nuclear weapons. The mode of enrichment was the gaseous diffusion of uranium hexaflouride to separate the lighter fissile isotope U-235 from the heavier non-fissile isotope U-238. The Paducah plant originally produced low-enriched uranium which was further refined at Portsmouth and the K-25 plant at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. From the 1960s the Portsmouth and Paducah plants were dedicated to uranium enrichment for nuclear power plants. In 1984, the operating contract was assumed by Martin Marietta Energy Systems. Lockheed Martin has operated the plant since the merger of Martin Marietta with Lockheed in 1995. From 2001, all USEC production has been consolidated at Paducah.
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