Qualla: Fernald Feed Materials Production Center

Fernald Feed Materials Production Center: Introduction

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit United States Department of Energy, Public domain. The front page of The Cincinnati Times-Star announced it plainly on March 31, 1951: the Atomic Energy Commission was building a "$3 million uranium ore refining plant near Fernald." What the newspaper could not have known was that this facility would produce 170,000 metric tons of uranium metal over the next four decades, release millions of pounds of radioactive dust into the Ohio countryside, contaminate the drinking water aquifer beneath it, and eventually cost $4.4 billion to clean up. Today, the site where farmers once grew corn above the Great Miami aquifer is a nature preserve. It is also permanently unfit for human habitation.

Image: United States Department of Energy | Public domain

Fernald Feed Materials Production Center: Born from Cold War Panic

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ENERGY.GOV, Public domain. The Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb on August 29, 1949. The Korean War erupted ten months later. Suddenly, the scattered network of uranium processing plants the Manhattan Project had left behind -- a chemical works in St. Louis, a facility in Cleveland, a smelter in...

Image: ENERGY.GOV | Public domain

Fernald Feed Materials Production Center: Nine Plants, One Mission

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ENERGY.GOV, Public domain. The Fernald complex operated nine specialized plants in an industrial chain that transformed raw uranium ore into finished metal fuel rods. Plant 1 crushed and sampled incoming ore, including radium-bearing pitchblende from the Belgian Congo that released invisible radon gas. Pla...

Image: ENERGY.GOV | Public domain

Fernald Feed Materials Production Center: The Secrets That Seeped Out

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ENERGY.GOV, Public domain. In 1984, the public learned what nearby residents had long suspected: Fernald was releasing millions of pounds of uranium dust into the atmosphere. The contamination was not limited to air. Radioactive material had leached into the soil, seeped into groundwater, and spread throug...

Image: ENERGY.GOV | Public domain

Fernald Feed Materials Production Center: The $4.4 Billion Reckoning

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ENERGY.GOV, Public domain. Fernald was proposed as a Superfund site in July 1989 and officially listed that November. Congress ordered the facility closed and cleaned up. The scale of remediation was staggering. Fluor Corporation won the contract in 1992 and spent the next fourteen years dismantling the en...

Image: ENERGY.GOV | Public domain

Fernald Feed Materials Production Center: Wetlands Where Uranium Burned

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Greg Hume, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Fernald Preserve opened in 2007 on the land where uranium once burned in thermite reactions. Man-made wetlands now cover ground that held processing plants. Birds nest where drums of radioactive ore once stood stacked in rows. A LEED Platinum visitor center tells the story of...

Image: Greg Hume | CC BY-SA 4.0