The Fernald Feed Material Production Center was the government’s principal uranium processing facility, supplying material for the nuclear weapons program from 1951 to 1989. The site had nine plants within a heavily industrialized 136-acre complex, surrounded by a thousand-acre buffer zone. It employed around 1,000 people at its peak, and was operated by Westinghouse. After closure, one of the most extensive remedial activities in the nation’s history began, which was completed in 2006 and cost $4.4 billion. None of the original industrial structures remain, and most of the site is now a nature preserve open to the public, with the exception of a grass-covered disposal cell, where contaminated material is consolidated and monitored.
