Oak Ridge Team ‘Crushes It,’ Delivering Savings Again on Major Y-12 Project

Hundreds of old drums in Alpha-4 are not compliant for shipping and must be crushed and packaged for shipment and disposal. Using a crusher, a three-person Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management crew can now process 35 to 40 drums per hour, compared to 10 to 12 drums using previous manual cutting methods.

Quest for innovation, efficiency led Oak Ridge to crusher that performs work safer and faster

OAK RIDGE, Tenn. — The Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management (OREM) and cleanup contractor United Cleanup Oak Ridge (UCOR) are “crushing it” at the legacy Alpha-4 building as an innovative approach to squashing old drums is accelerating waste disposal, avoiding $300,000 in costs and eliminating tasks with higher safety risks.

This innovation builds on earlier cost savings at Alpha-4 resulting from the declassification of materials for more efficient disposal. Combined, these efforts have pushed the project at the Y-12 National Security Complex nearly two years ahead of schedule with $16.3 million in cost savings.

“Alpha-4 is one of the most complex facilities in our cleanup portfolio,” said Alpha-4 Federal Project Director Morgan Carden. “Despite the challenges inherent with a project of this scale and magnitude, our team is advancing work forward and finding ways to save costs and accelerate the schedule.”

Spanning 561,000 square feet over 13 acres of land, Alpha-4 was constructed in the 1940s as part of the Manhattan Project for uranium separation and later supported lithium operations during the Cold War before being shut down in the 1960s.

Alpha-4 was a former uranium separation and lithium processing facility that operated during the Manhattan Project and Cold War. The Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management is tasked with deactivating and demolishing the 561,000-square-foot facility covering 13 acres of land at the Y-12 National Security Complex.

OREM and UCOR are addressing the contents of the sprawling building as they prepare it for future demolition. An early step involves sorting and segregating legacy containers inside the facility, and teams identified an alternative to the traditional approach for downsizing empty waste drums that aren’t compliant for shipment for disposal.

Historically, crews used saws and shears to cut drums manually to reduce the size of them for disposal. This labor-intensive process created sharp metal edges, elevated noise levels, increased personal protective equipment (PPE) requirements and introduced additional injury risk.

However, a new drum crusher compacts these drums into uniform round “pucks.” This innovation creates efficiencies and avoids costs by allowing workers to reduce the size of the drums much faster and place more drums in each waste container for shipment. This approach also significantly reduces risks and removes the need for the previous PPE requirements.

With this new equipment, a three-person crew can now process 35 to 40 drums per hour, compared to 10 to 12 drums using previous manual cutting methods. To date, workers have crushed 261 of the 354 legacy drums at Alpha-4.

This is the first Oak Ridge project to use the equipment, but now there are plans to apply it to other large deactivation and demolition projects on the horizon at Y-12 that involve large quantities of similar drums and waste containers.

“Thoughtful planning for waste disposal helps eliminate hazards early, protecting workers and support staff while maximizing the value of taxpayer dollars,” said Jonathan McKamey, UCOR’s Alpha-4 superintendent. “We are constantly evaluating and reevaluating our approaches to ensure we implement the safest and most cost-effective methods possible for cleanup.”

UCOR continues steady progress throughout the facility to begin preparing for deactivation. In late 2025, crews achieved “cold and dark” status, which involves isolating all the electrical systems to safely conduct future work inside the building.

-Contributor: Ryan Getsi