Assistant Energy Secretary for Environmental Management Anne Marie White says 90% of remediation at the East Tennessee Technology Park at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee should be finished in the upcoming federal budget year.
The ETTP site enriched uranium for the U.S. nuclear deterrent, and later for commercial nuclear power plants, from 1945 through 1985.
URS-CH2M Oak Ridge (UCOR) is working under a nine-year, $2.7 billion decontamination and decommissioning project for the Oak Ridge Site, which extends through July 2020. Remediation of the 2,200-acre East Tennessee Technology Park, previously known as the Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant, is a priority under the current contract. UCOR has already finished dismantling the five former gaseous diffusion buildings at the site.
In April 9 written testimony to the House Armed Services Committee’s strategic forces subcommittee, White said she expects DOE to issue a new cleanup contract for the Oak Ridge Reservation in the third quarter of fiscal 2020, which begins Oct. 1.
During fiscal 2020, the Office of Environmental Management also expects to finish construction of a transuranic sludge processing test area and complete processing legacy transuranic debris waste at Oak Ridge.
The Energy Department should also hit the midpoint on four years of construction on the Outfall 200 Mercury Treatment Facility at Oak Ridge, White said. The agency recently removed over 3 tons of mercury from equipment at the Y-12 National Security Site in preparation for construction of the project, which will remove mercury from Upper East Fork Poplar Creek.
A joint venture, APTIM-North Wind Construction, won a $92 million DOE contract in December to build the treatment plant. The $224 million project could be operational in 2022, DOE has said.
White was testifying about the Donald Trump administration’s $6.5 billion budget request for the Office of Environmental Management, which is down from the current appropriation of $7.2 billion.
