SUMMERLIN, NEV. — Amentum-led United Cleanup Oak Ridge will break ground this summer on a new low-level radioactive waste landfill at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site, U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.) told Exchange Monitor’s Radwaste Summit here Tuesday.
“I’m proud to announce that on Aug. 2 in Oak Ridge we are going to break ground on the new disposal cell,” said Fleischmann, who chairs the Energy and Water subcommittee for the House Appropriations Committee. “That means that legacy cleanup will be able to continue and be completed over the next few decades.”
DOE and Fleischmann have long maintained the new 2.2-million cubic yard Environmental Management Disposal Facility is vital to disposing of debris from mercury-laden buildings at the Y-12 National Security Complex and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. There are more than 70 buildings at the laboratory campus alone that need to be torn down, Fleischmann said.
When Fleischmann took office in 2011, he said he quickly learned the existing Oak Ridge landfill, the Environmental Management Waste Management Facility, would be filled up by 2027 or 2028.
It took a decade of negotiations with DOE, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation and related stakeholders before a record of decision endorsing the new landfill was signed in September 2022, Fleischmann said.
