Oak Ridge Delivers Exceptional Safety, Cleanup Progress in Fiscal Year 2026

The Old Steam Plant undergoes demolition. The 13,454-square-foot facility was built in 1943. Over its more than 80-year lifespan, the facility supported uranium operations, fuels testing, maintenance and storage.

OAK RIDGE, Tenn. — The Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management (OREM) and cleanup contractor United Cleanup Oak Ridge (UCOR) achieved major cleanup milestones in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 while maintaining a strong safety record.

Crews logged more than 1.3 million safe hours in the fiscal year as they addressed some of the nation’s most complex environmental cleanup challenges across the Oak Ridge Reservation.

Their disciplined approach to safety enabled teams to manage over 50 million pounds of waste generated during the deactivation and demolition of legacy Manhattan Project and Cold War-era infrastructure at the Y-12 National Security Complex, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and East Tennessee Technology Park (ETTP).

“The progress across Oak Ridge demonstrates what is possible when safety and mission execution reinforce one another,” OREM Deputy Manager Teresa Robbins said. “From removing legacy facilities and managing millions of pounds of waste to preparing land for its next use, these accomplishments are reducing risk while enabling enduring missions at Y-12 and ORNL.”

Crews at the White Wing Scrap Yard safely complete deforestation activities, clearing over 39 acres of trees, processing 17 acres of timber and packaging close to 400 bags of legacy soil to support future remedial activities and commercial redevelopment there.

Safety and cleanup highlights:

• Y-12: Crews tallied more than 300,000 safe hours and removed over 43 million pounds of waste. Major accomplishments included the demolition of the Alpha-2 facility — the site's largest teardown to date — and the Old Steam Plant. New cutting and isolation technologies used at Alpha-4 and Beta-4 reduced risk, saving more than $20 million.
• ORNL: Teams completed 375,581 safe hours managing complex radiological environments in ORNL’s central campus. Demolition advanced on 10 facilities on Isotope Row, and remote systems significantly reduced worker radiation exposure across six aging facilities.
• Essential Operations: UCOR’s Nuclear Operations team supported ORNL’s critical waste systems, compiling 410,000 safe hours. These systems discharged over 27 billion cubic meters of gaseous waste and treated more than 73 million gallons of liquid waste, ensuring important site operations continued.
• Land restoration: Crews at ETTP, the former Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant, shifted to work that comes after cleanup. They recorded more than 91,810 safe hours and generated more than 5 million pounds of waste. Work included drainage restoration, outfall management, excess equipment removal and preservation of historic Manhattan Project artifacts. At the White Wing Scrap Yard, a 100-acre former disposal site for contaminated Cold War equipment and debris, workers cleared over 39 acres of land through the specialized Vegetation Management Program supporting future remediation and redevelopment.
• Managing waste: Waste Operations crews recorded more than 117,000 safe hours while managing over 50 million pounds of deactivation and demolition waste across the reservation for disposal. They also managed over 11 million gallons of wastewater from landfills. The Transuranic Waste Processing Center safely characterized, prepared and processed more than 97% of contact- and remote-handled debris waste.

“We’re accelerating cleanup, taking on increasingly complex work and generating tremendous progress across the reservation, but we’re doing it with our people at the center,” said UCOR Executive Vice President and Deputy Program Director Sean Dunagan. “That performance reflects a workforce that looks out for one another, identifies better ways to execute the work and understands that safety is what enables us to keep moving the mission forward.”

-Contributor: Ryan Getsi