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       Recently, I wrote about a cube of uranium that was donated to a scientist anonymously. It turned out that it was confiscated from a German laboratory at the end of World War II. Several years ago, a mislabeled sample of radioactive material was discovered in a college chem lab. No one was sure where it came from. Apparently there are a lot of samples of unrecognized radioactive materials floating around. Another one of these orphan samples was just discovered recently at a high school in Ohio.
       Zahn’s Corner Middle School is located in the town of Piketon which is about eighty miles east of Cincinnati. The school has about 320 students. A small canister of powered enriched uranium was discovered at the school. Trances of Neptunium 237 were also found. Both of these materials are highly radioactive and can cause cancer with prolonged exposure.
        Scioto Valley Local School District Superintendent Todd Burkitt ordered that the school be closed last Monday. He said, “Even the last couple of hours have been very hectic. There's just not a playbook in how we deal with this. We're kind of writing the script as we go. We're not going to take any chances on someone's child. We just won't do that.” He also said that the school may remain closed while they investigate. The state department of education said that the students at the school had already put in the required hours for the year.  Fortunately, if a long closure is required while the investigation proceeds, it will not be necessary for any of the students to make up missed days.
       It is unclear exactly where the radioactive materials came from. It has been suggested that the source may be the nearby Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant which is only two miles from the school. This facility enriched uranium for the U.S. government. Both reactor grade uranium for use by the United States Atomic Energy program and weapons-grade uranium for use in U.S. nuclear weapons were enriched there. The facility stopped enriching uranium in 2001.
       Because of the discovery of the radioactive materials, the school now requires an environmental cleanup under the supervision of the Department of Energy (DoE). A DoE official told a local television station that “Routine air samples in the area of DOE Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon revealed trace amounts of two radiological isotopes that were more than one thousand to ten thousand times below the established threshold of public health concern. DOE treats all detections seriously—even those that are at such low levels.” The DoE statement went on to say that the Department was “committed to the safety, health and protection of our workforce, the general public and the environment at all our sites.” The DoE is planning on commissioning an “independent third party to perform an additional analysis of the air and ground readings to properly assess the situation.” The DoE is “confident that those findings will allay any cause for further concern.”
       As might be expected, the local community was unpleasantly surprised by the discovery. A Piketon city councilwoman said, “We aren't prepared for something like this, that's for sure… We, at this point, don't know how far the contamination has reached. That will be part of the ongoing investigation.” She pointed out that nearby bodies of water and homes had tested positive for enriched uranium and neptunium.