OAK RIDGE, Tenn. – The Y-12 National Security Complex began its first demolition project funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) today. Building 9735 is the first of the ARRA deactivation and demolition projects at Y-12 to be torn down.  Built in 1946 as an engineering laboratory, Building 9735 ceased operations in the mid-1990s. The demolition of Building 9735 is expected to take two to three days.

To complete this work, B&W Y-12 awarded a contract to Safety and Ecology Corporation (SEC). 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.

The demolition of this 15,043-square-foot facility also completes the razing of an entire row of engineering buildings. The other six buildings on Engineering Row were demolished in 2008.  Like other aging buildings on the Y-12 site, the deterioration of Building 9735 has been accelerating and making work in and around it more hazardous.

The project involves complete deactivation and demolition of the building as well as, the disposition of approximately 1,911 cubic meters of material and waste to the Y-12 Sanitary and Industrial Waste Landfills and approximately 31 cubic meters to the Nevada Test Site.  The building had asbestos and lead but minimal radiological contamination. After the Building 9735 project is complete, the site will be converted into a 21-space parking lot for personnel on the east end of Y-12. “The entire project will be completed four months ahead of schedule,” said Jim Blair, B&W Y-12’s project manager for ARRA demolitions at the site.

Monday’s demolition is one of seven major cleanup projects at Y-12 funded through ARRA:  demolition of Building 9735, 9206, and four buildings in the Biology Complex; disposition of legacy material from buildings Alpha 5 and Beta 4; cleanup of the Old Salvage Yard; and remediation of the West End Mercury Area’s storm sewers.

The funds at Y-12 are part of $755 million received by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Office Environmental Management program for projects in Oak Ridge. In total, 49 buildings across the Oak Ridge Reservation are being demolished using ARRA funds in addition to other projects ranging from 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 begin much needed cleanup projects at Y-12, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the East Tennessee Technology Park, and the Transuranic Waste Processing Center.