PIKETON — Summer came early for the kids at Zahns Corner Middle School in Pike County.
Officials in the Scioto Valley Local School District closed the building for the rest of the school year after the discovery of trace amounts of enriched radioactive uranium material in and around the school
School officials say more tests will be done and the health impact of the contamination evaluated.
“The SVLSD Board of Education has made the decision to close the Zahns Corner Middle School until the source, extent, level of contamination and potential impacts to public health and the the environment can be determined,” Scioto Valley school board president Brandon Wooldridge wrote in an open letter to parents.
District officials notified parents and the community about the closing Monday after the discovery that the enriched Neptunium 237 was detected in an Energy Department monitor, Wooldridge said.
“Moving forward, the state will work with the federal government to make sure the environment is safe for our students and teachers,” state Sen. Bob Peterson (R-Washington Court House) wrote in a statement from his office. “If that means finding a different facility or discussing plans for new construction, I will work with the Ohio Department of Education to help make that happen.”
The school is several miles from the U.S. Energy Department’s Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, which produced enriched uranium until 2001 and where a nuclear waste disposal site is being built.
The Columbus Dispatch reports DOE officials say construction work will continue despite community concerns.
DOE released a report in 2017 saying trace amounts of radioactive neptunium had been detected in an air-monitoring station on the school’s grounds. The district says enriched uranium has been detected inside the school.