OAK RIDGE, Tenn. – As a part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the Department of Energy has awarded a $16.8 million contract to Safety and Ecology Corporation (SEC) for environmental cleanup operations at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Under this contract, SEC will demolish and dispose (D&D) of 34 facilities in the ORNL central campus area, which had previously been used to support reactor operations and activities at the laboratory.

“This funding is helping to accelerate the cleanup and demolition of unneeded facilities at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory – an important step for the continued environmental cleanup at the site,” said Gerald Boyd, manager of the Oak Ridge Office. “This small business award will create jobs locally and support economic development in our community.”

In addition to the D&D work, SEC will also remove materials from inside five additional central campus buildings and six Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTG) located outside Building 3517. An RTG is an electrical generator that obtains its power from radioactive decay.  In such a device, the heat released by the decay of a suitable radioactive material is converted into electricity.

SEC is a small business that provides full-service environmental, hazardous, and radiological infrastructure remediation, and advanced construction services that includes facility deactivation, decontamination, and demolition and site closure.

This $16.8 million contract is part of $755 million received by ORO’s Environmental Management program for projects in Oak Ridge.  In total, 49 buildings across the Oak Ridge Reservation are being demolished using Recovery Act funds.  Additionally, other work includes tank and soils remediation, capping of old burial grounds, and expansion of the on-site waste disposal facility. The Recovery Act provides Oak Ridge the opportunity to accelerate cleanup projects at ORNL, Y-12, the East Tennessee Technology Park, and the Transuranic Waste Processing Center.