DOE CONSIDERING HALTING ORNL HOT CELLS D&D PROJECT FOR LACK OF FUNDS

A project to decommission a set of aging hot cells at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory appears set to come to a premature end because of a lack of funding. Department of Energy officials at Oak Ridge are recommending that the two remaining hot cells at ORNL Building 3026 be placed in a “safe” surveillance-and-maintenance mode until sufficient funding becomes available to complete demolition, according to DOE spokesman Mike Koentop. A final decision on the fate of the project has not yet been made. “As impacts of realized risks were fully determined, we have concluded that remaining funds are not sufficient to complete the project,” Koentop said in a written response yesterday. “Currently, the Oak Ridge Environmental Management Program is finalizing its recommendation on a potential path forward since the … contract was Recovery Act funded and no additional Recovery Act funds are available to add to the contract.”

The ORNL Building 3026 project, which got underway in 2010, originally entailed the demolition of a set of six hot cells that DOE has said pose a significant risk to lab workers and the nearby community because of the potential threat of the spread of contamination. As of last summer, four of the six hot cells had been demolished. The project has been complicated, though, by the discovery of greater-than-anticipated amounts of contamination. As a result, the cost of the project significantly increased from an initial price tag of $14.5 million to a revised estimate approved last June of $33.8 million. Last fall, DOE warned that the project was again at risk of exceeding its baseline after the discovery a source with significantly more radiation than anticipated resulted in most of the remaining contingency on the project being used.