K-31 Demolition Set to Get Underway This Fall
WC Monitor
6/20/2014
URS-CH2M Oak Ridge, LLC, the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge cleanup manager, said this week it is ahead of schedule in getting the K-31 Building ready for demolition, which should begin sometimes this fall. K-31 is potentially a bridge between the demolition of K-25, which was essentially completed in February, and the next big job: decommissioning and demolition of the K-27 uranium-enrichment facility. By stacking the projects, UCOR has been able to keep most of the security-cleared workforce intact and ready for the work through 2015 and beyond. The K-31 work is relatively simple compared to some of the other demolition projects, because the processing equipment and most of the contamination was removed from the big building years ago as part of the Three-Building Project carried out by BNFL Inc.
Some of the truck drivers waiting for work in waste transportation at the East Tennessee Technology Park have grown anxious in recent months because the waste removal work hasn’t been available at the site, and they privately expressed concern that the work at K-31 might have been delayed. UCOR spokesman Allen Schubert said there’s no delay, although he did acknowledge that the current activities do not require a lot of waste transportation to DOE’s CERCLA landfill several miles away. “We are in the midst of performing a number of pre-demolition activities such as transite-siding removal (about one-third complete), isolating power throughout the building, removing asbestos insulation from around piping in the building, and draining oil from cranes located inside the building among other activities,” Schubert said in an email response to questions. “We still project demolition will start in October,” he said.
UCOR Sends Another Sludge Shipment Off-Site for Treatment
WC Monitor
6/20/2014
URS-CH2M Oak Ridge (UCOR), the Department of Energy’s environmental management contractor in Oak Ridge, confirmed this week that a third shipment of radioactive sludge has been shipped to the Perma-Fix Northwest Facility in Washington state, with a fourth shipment of 5,000 gallons of sludge tentatively scheduled to be shipped in the second week of July. UCOR spokesman Allen Schubert confirmed the latest milestones in the cleanup of the City of Oak Ridge’s sewage-waste treatment facility. The city facility became contaminated early this year with radioactive technetium-99 as a result of runoff from the K-25 demolition project. The radioactive materials infiltrated the sewer lines at DOE’s former uranium-enrichment site that carried the material to the city facility on the other side of the Clinch River.
The Department of Energy is paying for the cleanup at the site of the city’s Rarity Ridge Waste Water Treatment Plant. Federal officials have said the cleanup may require as many as 20 waste shipments–at 5,000 gallons each—to get the radioactivity levels back to normal. After the sludge is thermally treated at the Perma-Fix facility at Richland, Wash., the ashes will be sent to the EnergySolutions facility in Utah for disposal.
