K-31 DEMOLITION TO GET UNDERWAY
WC Monitor
3/28/2014
Cleanup contractor URS-CH2M Oak Ridge (UCOR) has received approval to proceed with demolition of the K-31 building at the East Tennessee Technology Park. The move is designed to keep the workforce that was assembled for the massive K-25 D&D project largely intact until the Department of Energy is ready to move forward with the K-27 D&D project in a big way. UCOR has already started mobilizing the workforce for K-31, according to Steve Dahlgren, the contractor’s deactivation and decommissioning manager. K-31 was part of the Three-Building D&D Project that was carried out by BNFL Inc., in the early 1990s and early 2000s. The processing equipment was stripped from the gaseous diffusion plant, which occupied a 17-acre footprint and had about 1.66 million square feet of floor space, and that should making the upcoming demolition much easier. The cleanup at K-31 was originally done with the intent of making the big building available for industrial reuse, but there were no takers.
Dahlgren said it later became clear that cleaning the facility up to a high standard would have been as expensive as building a new facility from scratch. But the earlier D&D work should make the upcoming demolition work much easier, similar to the K-33 demolition conducted in 2010-2011earlier by LATA-Sharp. That project cost about $50 million and was funded with Recovery Act money. Regarding K-31, Dahlgren said, “The deactivation is already complete. It’s just the building.”
Mike Koentop, executive officer of the DOE’s Environmental Management Office at Oak Ridge, said the baseline cost estimate for K-31 demolition is about $31 million. But he said UCOR “is evaluating how they can reduce costs based on lessons learned from the K-25 demolition.” In a recent interview, Dahlgren said, “We’ll be doing characterization first and then transite removal and then the [demolition] of the structure. So, it really allows us to demobilize from K-25 and mobilize at [K-31] at the same time, which really saves us a lot of money.” Instead of having to put together a new workforce for K-31, UCOR will be able to use workers already trained, security cleared, and “used to working in this safety culture,” Dahlgren said.
Switch in Focus from K-27
At one time, the plan was to move directly from demolition of K-25 to nearby K-27. However, that got stalled because of funding issues, and Dahlgren indicated that the demolition activity at K-31 may be timed so that the workforce can move from K-31 to K-27 without major interruptions. Deactivation work is taking place at K-27, and the UCOR official said the contractor hopes to be able to “roll right into K-27 demo” after the K-31 project is completed—again making maximum use of the existing workforce. Dahlgren said UCOR is trying to time the work at K-27 and K-31 in such a way as to “level-ize” the workforce and support the work with the available funding. “It’ll be a win-win for the workforce and DOE,” he said. After K-31 and K-27 are demolished, there will be no more process-gas buildings left on the sprawling site now known as the East Tennessee Technology Park. “It’ll be a good milestone,” Dahlgren said.
GOVERNOR PUSHES ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
WC Monitor
3/28/2014
Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam visited the East Tennessee Technology Park on March 21 and raved about the economic potential of the site that once was a uranium-enrichment complex that supplied much of the enriched uranium for the nation’s Cold War nuclear arsenal. Today, the ETTP is a cleanup project that’s still in progress, sharing space with the reindustrialization of properties that has enjoyed mixed results over the past two decades. After a briefing from DOE’s Oak Ridge officials, the Republican governor—joined by a number of state and local officials—said he could see the future and it’s potentially very bright. The sprawling site, which occupied much of a valley on the northwestern part of the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge reservation, could become a unique industrial site in East Tennessee, the governor said. “As a state, we have a real vested interest in what happens here,” Haslam told reporters at Fire Station No. 4 near the site of the recently demolished K-25 building—a mile-long, U-shaped plant that was built during the World War II Manhattan Project. That site will be converted into a historical attraction, but the surrounding property will become open for private development as the cleanup activities are completed.
Haslam said the site has everything industrial recruiters are seeking. “Finding 2,000 mostly flat acres in East Tennessee is next to impossible,” he said, noting that the site is also within three miles of Interstate 40, seven minutes from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, with easy access and a ready-to-go infrastructure. “It’s incredibly exciting to see the economic development potential of this property,” Haslam said.
Much Cleanup Work Remains
Some clean-up parcels at the East Tennessee Technology Park have already been leased to private companies, but much of the site still bears contamination associated with its nuclear legacy and will require additional cleanup projects. Even at K-25, where vast tons of contaminated rubble were hauled away during the demolition project that took years and a billion dollars to demolish, cleanup activities are continuing. Lots of sampling will be needed to determine how much more cleanup is required. Many of the plant’s other buildings were demolished before that, but a few remain. Those includes the last of the uranium-enrichment facilities, K-27, and a number of waste-treatment facilities, such as the shutdown TSCA Incinerator.
Haslam emphasized the need to finish the cleanup activities. “The cleanup is important to us because it opens up a window of opportunity by having this big a piece of property right here in East Tennessee,” the governor said. He promised to help where possible. In response to questions, Haslam said there’s a direct connection between jobs creation and the cleanup operations. He said he’d talked with Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz about three weeks ago and plans to push the Oak Ridge agenda in other meetings in Washington, D.C. “To do that, I need to pick up the kind of knowledge that hopefully I gained this morning [in briefings on the progress of cleanup],” he said.
Declining Funding
Funding for Oak Ridge environmental activities has declined in recent years, and there’s another projected drop in FY 2015.The administration’s requested funding for Oak Ridge cleanup work in FY 2015 is $385 million. That’s down from about $430 million this year this year and well below the funding level in years past. “Obviously, funding for cleanup in the budget continues to be an issue and will be until this site is completed,” Haslam said. “One of the things we want to make certain if you look at where DOE is spending money around the country is that our fair share is being spent to clean up the site here.” It will significantly easier to develop the site once it’s completely clean, not partially clean, he said.
The Oak Ridge site could be used for manufacturing or other purposes, Haslam said, perhaps even an expanding part of Tennessee’s red-hot and growing automotive industry. “I think you always want to recruit to your strengths,” he said. “I think the nation’s best national lab is five minutes away. Anything that can be related to other work here in Oak Ridge is a natural. One of the things we’ve started to see at the state is that’s a huge advantage.” He cited the proximity of ORNL’s Carbon Fiber Technology Center, which is demonstrating cheaper ways to produce the valuable, lightweight material that’s used in many automobile parts.
DOE TO HOLD SITE TOUR FOR NEW TRU SLUDGE CONTRACT
WC Monitor
3/28/20014
The Department of Energy plans to hold a site tour next week for companies interested in bidding on the new contract to provide architect and engineering services for design of the Sludge Processing Facility Buildouts Project at the Oak Ridge Transuranic Waste Processing Center. The site tour is scheduled to be held April 3, and those companies interested in participating have until March 28 to register by email at [email protected], according to a notice issued this week.
The Sludge Processing Facility Buildouts Project is intended to address approximately 2,000 cubic meters of remote-handled transuranic waste sludge and associated supernate. DOE is seeking a firm to design and build a test facility for the treatment systems to be used, as well as to complete the final design for the project and provide support during the construction and operational readiness review phase of the project. In a set of questions-and- answers issued yesterday, DOE provided more information on its plans for competing the contract. “SF 330s will be evaluated to determine the most highly qualified firm, in relation to architectural design and engineering services in support of sludge processing facilities, based on criterion responses. Discussions/interviews will then be held with at least three of the most highly qualified firms. A price proposal will then be requested and negotiations conducted beginning with the most preferred firm in the final selection,” DOE said.
DOE also issued this week an amendment to its pre-solicitation notice seeking Standard Form 330s from interested companies. Among other changes, the amendment allows interested companies to submit information on projects completed in the last 10 years to demonstrate specialized expertise, one of the four evaluation criteria to be used to consider submissions. DOE had previously sought information from projects completed in the last five years.
