In all but the literal sense, the dust has now settled around building K-27 at the Energy Department’s Oak Ridge Reservation, marking a prominent, but by no means final milestone for the agency’s cleanup of the former uranium enrichment facility at the eastern Tennessee site.
On hand to witness the final demolition of the 383,000-square-foot building was DOE’s top cleanup official, Monica Regalbuto, assistant secretary for environmental management. Joining the DOE vet were Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.), along with Bob Martineau, Tennessee’s top environmental official, and Charlotte Bertrand, director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Federal Facilities Restoration and Reuse Office.
Alexander, who chairs the Senate appropriations subcommittee that writes DOE’s annual spending bill, praised DOE and contractor employees, lauding site personnel for avoiding costly court entanglements that have bedevilled other legacy nuclear-waste cleanup efforts across the complex.
“When issues have arisen, they have been resolved by people working together to get a result – not by the courts, and that has allowed more money to be spent on cleanup, not legal fees and court costs,” Alexander said in a press release.
K-27 demolition began in February and was cataloged photographically on the agency’s Flickr account. Tuesday’s final teardown marks the first time DOE has demolished all of a site’s gaseous diffusion facilities. Five such buildings were built at Oak Ridge to support the World War II-era Manhattan Project. K-27 operated until 1964.
Other gaseous diffusion plants await decontamination and demolition at DOE’s Paducah and Portsmouth facilities.
AECOM and CH2M are the major partners in UCOR, DOE’s Oak Ridge deactivation and demolition prime. The company’s nine-year, $2.4 billion cleanup contract runs through July 31, 2020. That includes a four-year option that kicked in on Aug. 1.
