The Energy Department believes the Central Bear Creek Valley is the best place within the Oak Ridge Reservation (ORR) in Tennessee to develop a new 2.2-million-cubic yard waste disposal facility – due in part to its geology and groundwater flow conditions.
Because the same valley is home to Oak Ridge’s existing Environmental Management Waste Management Facility (EMWMF), DOE has the benefit of about three decades’ worth of water and soil sampling history in the area, which also offers a stable subsurface. In all, the department considered about 35 sites across the 3,300-acre ORR. The preferred location would take up about 70 acres, roughly 4,200 feet inside the reservation boundary, DOE said in its disposal plan.
The new landfill would take waste generated by the 1980 Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) cleanup at the Y-12 National Security Complex, the East Tennessee Technology Park (ETTP), and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
The existing facility is 75 percent full as of January, having received 160,000 waste shipments since opening in 2002, and is expected to hit full capacity in the mid-2020s.
Uranium enrichment ended at ETTP, the former K-25 Gaseous Diffusion Plant, in 1985. That effort, combined with the nuclear weapons component manufacturing at Y-12 and operation of nuclear research reactors at ORNL, has contaminated soils, groundwater, and buildings across the federal reservation.
There are still decades of cleanup left at Oak Ridge. While the most hazardous material will be shipped off-site, there will still be plenty of waste from soil and building rubble left for on-site disposal. About two-thirds of the waste going into the new facility is expected to be demolition debris, with soil, sediment, and sludge accounting for the rest.
The Oak Ridge lab will account for less than 30 percent of the total forecast waste volume at the new site, but 80 percent of the radioactivity, projections show.
The estimated total project costs for on-site disposal range from $732 million to $928 million.
