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Located in the beautiful, mountainous section of upper east Tennessee, Unicoi County contains approximately 201 square miles. Forty-nine to 50 percent of the area of Unicoi County is US Government land. The county is bordered by the Tennessee counties of Washington, Carter and Greene and by the North Carolina counties of Madison, Yancey and Mitchell. The Nolichucky River is the main waterway in the county. The Nolichucky name originates where the North Toe River joins the Cane River below Huntdale, NC. The Nolichucky Gorge is a popular center for whitewater rafting.
The Clinchfield Railroad was the major employer of the county for a number of years. Then, in 1916, Southern Potteries located in Erwin. Southern Potteries specialized in hand painted dinnerware called Blue Ridge China. During construction of the plant, local people were given instruction in lining and hand painting. Most of the pottery workers came from 'up north', mainly from East Liverpool and Sebring, Ohio and Chester, West Virginia.
The Holston Corporation built modern homes, which were purchased by the pottery for their workers. The houses were built along Ohio Avenue and Unaka Way and were of three designs. Many people thought that Ohio Avenue was so named because of the Ohio people who lived there. Not so. The streets had been named earlier for the railroad. Parallel streets are Carolina, Clinchfield and Ohio. Most of the houses are still standing. They have been remodeled, enlarged, and had their porches enclosed, etc. but can still be recognized as "Pottery houses".
At the peak of its activities during the 1940's, over 1000 people were employed at Southern Potteries. More than half the employees worked in the hand painted department, where most of the work was done by women.
After World War II, when imports began coming into the country, the pottery began to lose money. Operations were slowly curtailed until the closing in 1957. Today hand painted dinnerware from Southern Potteries is a collectors item.
Fortunately for the workers of Unicoi County, about the time Southern Potteries was phasing out, Davison Chemical Company located a plant in Erwin. The plant processed Uranium and thorium products. In 1964, the name was changed to Nuclear Fuel Services, Inc. Today, Nuclear Fuel Services, Inc. is privately owned. It is the major supplier of fuel for nuclear powered navy ships.
NRC orders enhanced security at nuclear fuel plants: Two uranium fuel plants in Lynchburg, Virginia, and Erwin, Tennessee, must immediately adopt stricter anti-terrorist measures such as more guards, vehicle barriers and patrols, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said on Aug. 22, 2002. The plants, owned by BWX Technologies Inc. and Nuclear Fuel Services, take enriched uranium and make it into fuel for nuclear reactors. The NRC said it ordered the two plants to adopt similar measures already put in place by U.S. nuclear power plants as a precaution after the Sept. 11 attacks. (Reuters Aug. 22, 2002)
NRC proposes imposition of $60,000 penalty on NFS for lack of accounting on Strategic Special Nuclear Material On October 17, 2003, the NRC issued a Notice of Violation and Proposed Imposition of Civil Penalty in the amount of $60,000 to Nuclear Fuel Services, Inc.: "[...] This problem represents a significant breakdown in the implementation of the licensee's material control and accounting (MC&A) system in that a substantial amount of Category 1A Strategic Special Nuclear Material (SSNM) went unaccounted for at the Erwin facility for a period of approximately 6 weeks beginning in June of 2001. The multiple failures in this case could have led to the undetected diversion of SSNM, and there would have been no record providing evidence that it was missing. [...]" (NRC, EN 03-045, October 14, 2003)
Monday, May 10, 2004, Associated Press
ERWIN, Tenn. - No bond was set Monday for two Israeli men who were arrested after leading the Unicoi County sheriff on a high-speed chase in a rented moving truck.
Shmuel Dahan and Almaliach Naor were in court Monday, but a bond hearing was not held because they are waiting for help from the Israeli consulate, according to Unicoi's deputy court clerk, Sheri Lunceford.
Dahan, 23, is charged with reckless driving, littering, false identification and evading arrest. Naor, whose age was not given, faces charges of false identification and evading arrest.
The truck, rented from a Ryder office in Mars Hills, N.C., was being held in the county garage pending an FBI investigation, officials said.
Police said they are also being investigated by the FBI. Phone calls left with the FBI's Knoxville office Monday were not immediately returned.
The incident began late Saturday afternoon when Unicoi County Sheriff Kent Harris noticed a rental truck traveling at a high speed along former U.S. Highway 23, a lightly traveled highway near the North Carolina state line.
"I was really concerned because the driver would not stop after I flashed my headlights for nearly three miles," Harris said. "He was weaving back and forth, and I was wondering what a large (rental truck) was doing on the two-lane highway late Saturday afternoon instead of the faster I-26 Interstate."
William B. Lawson, one of the lawyers appointed to represent the Israeli men, said they rented a truck and planned to haul furniture, but accidentally got off the interstate and got lost.
The sheriff said he saw the men throw something from the truck while they were being pursued. Officers scouring the area later found a vial containing an unknown substance along the roadway, he said.
Lawson said the vial contained a "fuel source," but he added that it hasn't been identified and authorities were treating it with caution.
Once the men were apprehended, officers also found a "Learn to Fly" brochure in the truck, leading Harris and others to express concern about security at the Nuclear Fuel Services plant in Erwin.
"I got a sick feeling when I saw it," Harris said.
Dahan also gave authorities a fake Florida driver's license issued in Plantation, Fla., he said, while Naor produced a fake identification card.
Lawson said the Naor is a young man who doesn't speak English and used the fake ID to get into a Miami nightclub. He said they were both in the country legally.
"We're trying to get these gentlemen released," Lawson said. "They were just traveling through, headed up north."
Harris subsequently contacted the FBI, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and other local authorities to look into the situation.
"We're not overreacting," Harris said. "We have a responsibility to protect the citizens of Unicoi County and that's what I'm going to do at any cost. I'd rather overreact, if that's what you call it, than be sorry later."
source Harris said early Monday afternoon he was waiting on the results of tests on the liquid substance in the brown container. The bottle contained a "gooey liquid" and some sort of pellets. The bottle appeared as if it had once held pesticides of some sort, but the label was missing. Field tests done by officers turned up no evidence of drugs. "We don't know exactly what's in it yet," Harris said.
source The sheriff says the men were driving the rental truck over the speed limit but would not stop when deputies tried to pull them over. Deputies say the men threw a vial of liquid out of the truck's window during the chase. Authorities are not sure what was in the vial, but the liquid reportedly became warm when they shook it.
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The chemical extraction of the plutonium from MOX fuel pellets
Use of cationic or anionic (positively- and negatively-charged) ion-exchange resins (10, 11, 12);
Ion-exchange resins
An ion-exchange method would be the simplest and could be used to separate plutonium of high purity with acceptable efficiency in a rapid, single-stage, single-batch process (12). Suitable resins are extensively used in industry for water softening, waste treatment and resource recovery.
They are available "off-the-shelf" in tonne quantities with short delivery dates and several different types of resin are likely to prove suitable. These resins are highly suited to the recovery of plutonium from MOX fuel and are outlined in a confidential version of this report sent to the Department of Trade and Industry.
10. Guseva, L. I. and Tikhomirova, G. S. 1994, Simultaneous determination of natural and man-made actinides in environmental samples using ion exchange and mineral acid solutions, Radiochemistry 36, 55-61.
11. Araujo, B. F., Matsuda, H. T., Carvalho, E. I., and Araujo, I. C. 1992, Plutonium removal by ion-exchange chromatography , J. Radioanalyt. and Nuc. Chem.-Letters 165; 209-218.
12. Chen, Q. J., Aarkrog, A., Nielsen, S. P., Dahlgaard, H., Nies, H., Yu, Y. X., and Mandrup, K. J. 1993, Determination of plutonium in environmental samples by controlled valence in anion-exchange, J. Radioanalyt. & Nuc. Chem. - articles 172, 281-288.
12 May 2004, Julie Ball, Asheville Citizen-Times
ERWIN, Tenn. - A bottle that authorities say was tossed onto a Tennessee highway during a chase Saturday contained a latex stripper and an acid compound but didn't pose any threat of explosion, according to the FBI and authorities in Unicoi County.
"It's really no more than littering to be honest," said Thomas Browne, supervisor at the FBI's Johnson City, Tenn., office.
Two Israeli men arrested as a result of the chase remained jailed Tuesday afternoon. Immigration officials planned to hold them for a hearing because of a problem with their passports, said Unicoi County Sheriff Kent Harris. Harris said the men had tourist passports, but they were apparently working in the U.S. moving furniture.
Harris arrested the men Saturday after chasing them for more than two miles. He spotted the rented Ryder truck they were in driving "erratically" on Old U.S. 23 in Unicoi County, just across the state line from Madison County. Investigators found a fake Florida driver's license in a duffel bag in the truck and found the business card of a Florida flight instructor in one of the men's wallets.
Shmuel Dahan, 22, was charged with reckless driving, evading arrest, littering and false identification. Almaliach Naor, 19, was charged with false identification. A judge on Tuesday set a $5,000 bond for Naor and a $10,000 bond for Dahan. Once they post bond, the men will be turned over the immigration officials, Harris said.
The two men say they were on their way to West Virginia to deliver some furniture. Their attorney says they got lost and ended up on the curvy, mountain road.
Witnesses told authorities they saw someone toss a brown bottle from the truck during the police chase. The men maintain they did not throw out the container.
Harris said tests showed the bottle contained a mixture of Astromid 18, Gluconic acid and water. Astromid 18 is a latex stripper/cleaner, according to Harris.
Gluconic acid is "a slightly modified version of glucose (a sugar)," from a safety standpoint, equivalent to vinegar, according to Brad Sturgeon, assistant professor in chemistry at Western Carolina University.
Harris said it's not clear why the two were mixed together.
An official from Immigration and Customs Enforcement could not be reached Tuesday to comment on the status of the men.
Asheville Citizen Times
