The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management (OREM) has turned over for eventual private use parcels of land that once held two gaseous diffusion facilities at the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee.
The sites of the K-31 and K-33 buildings cover about 215 acres in what is now the East Tennessee Technology Park. The Community Reuse Organization of East Tennessee, which will oversee the reindustrialization of the land, now holds about half of the 2,200-acre site that was once the Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant.
K-31 and K-33 were among five onetime uranium enrichment facilities demolished between 2006 and 2016.
OREM spokesman Ben Williams said the Energy Department expects to finalize the transfer of another 182-acre parcel this year that includes portions of the K-25 Gaseous Diffusion Plant’s powerhouse and a once-contaminated area called Duct Island.
Contractor URS-CH2M Oak Ridge (UCOR) began cleaning up the site in 2011 under a contract valued at more than $2.5 billion through 2020, including all options. It replaced a previous DOE arrangement with Bechtel Jacobs.
Williams said the contractor is on track to complete demolition of buildings on the site by the end of 2020. The entirety of the East Tennessee Technology Park should be turned over to CROET by around that point.
