DOE’s Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management (OREM) logged another successful year, achieving all of its EM priorities for 2023 and advancing cleanup across the site.
Office of Environmental Management
December 19, 2023
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OAK RIDGE, Tenn. — DOE’s Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management (OREM) logged another successful year, achieving all of its EM priorities for 2023 and advancing cleanup across the site.
OREM and cleanup contractor UCOR continued transforming Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s (ORNL) central campus by tearing down the Low Intensity Test Reactor. This project marked Oak Ridge’s second reactor demolition in the span of a year. Crews also removed part of the reactor vessel from the neighboring Oak Ridge Research Reactor, a key step forward in the facility’s deactivation.
These projects are clearing away high-risk buildings that have been shut down for decades and opening land ORNL can reuse to support future research missions.
Crews were busy deactivating nearly a dozen other excess contaminated facilities at ORNL and the Y-12 National Security Complex (Y-12). These projects moved many structures closer to demolition, which enables future landscape changes at those sites.
Teams have prepared Y-12’s Alpha-2 facility, a former Manhattan Project uranium enrichment facility, for demolition next year. Some crews are busy deactivating the Beta-1 at Y-12, while others are deactivating the Isotope Row facilities, Building 3026 Hot Cell, and Graphite Reactor support facilities at ORNL
OREM is also steadily eliminating Oak Ridge’s inventory of nuclear waste. Processed transuranic waste is being steadily shipped to EM’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. Employees are downblending and disposing of the inventory of uranium-233 stored at ORNL. As part of an innovative public-private partnership, that project is also extracting medical isotopes that are supporting next generation cancer treatment research.
Two crucial infrastructure projects moved forward in 2023. OREM broke ground on the Environmental Management Disposal Facility this summer. With the existing onsite disposal facility nearing full capacity, this project is essential to maintain cleanup momentum at ORNL and Y-12.
Construction also progressed on the Mercury Treatment Facility at Y-12. When operational, this plant allows OREM to begin addressing Y-12’s large, mercury-contaminated facilities and sources of mercury in the soil, thereby protecting against releases into a nearby creek. Teams are finishing the framework on the treatment plant, and they’ve completed the foundation on the plant’s headworks facility and begun major installations to it.
Leaders gather in August to break ground on the Environmental Management Disposal Facility. With the current onsite disposal facility nearing full capacity, this project is essential to maintain cleanup momentum at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Y-12 National Security Complex.
OREM is nearing the end of its cleanup mission at the East Tennessee Technology Park (ETTP). With crews set to finish excavating contaminated soil from the site next year, the spotlight is now turning to groundwater — the last phase of cleanup there.
Planning took a major step forward in 2023 when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation approved proposed plans for addressing groundwater at ETTP. Those plans will help OREM chart its path to complete cleanup there and achieve its ultimate vision of transforming the site into a multi-use industrial center, national park and conservation area for the community.
-Contributor: Ben Williams
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