The Department of Energy’s top brass joined the governor of Tennessee, congressmen and local dignitaries Tuesday at the Oak Ridge Site to celebrate taking down contaminated facilities at what was once the K-25 uranium enrichment complex and is now the East Tennessee Technology Park.
The ceremony happened two days before two members of Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette’s security staff tested positive for the coronavirus. Brouillette himself has tested negative and is showing no symptoms of COVID-19, an agency spokeswoman said in a Thursday night announcement on Twitter.
The Department of Energy (DOE) spokeswoman did not immediately say if the two security detail members accompanied Brouillette to Oak Ridge where he shared a stage with 80-year-old Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, among others. Brouillette and others wore masks during the outdoor event except when speaking to the crowd.
“The work that this entailed is simply staggering,” Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette said during the webcast event. Over decades DOE and its contractors tore down 500 structures that could cover 225 football fields. “Many of them in terrible shape,” the DOE chief said.
The mile-long, 44-acre, K-25 gaseous diffusion plant building was the world’s largest structure when built in the early 1940s to aid the Manhattan Project.
During early stages of cleanup, one Oak Ridge worker was seriously hurt when he fell 30 feet after the floor he was standing upon collapsed. The incident drove home the care that must be taken in tearing down old contaminated buildings, officials noted.
“Oak Ridge is never asked to do things that are easy but perform things that are hard,” said Oak Ridge Mayor Warren Gooch (D), who joined Brouillette, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R), Sen. Alexander (R), Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R), among others, on the stage. Gooch said plans are underway to use a section of the East Tennessee Technology Park as a general aviation airport for the community. Appalachian Regional Commission money is being sought, he said.
The Amentum-Jacobs contractor team started work on the existing $3.3 billion contract in August 2011. In July, DOE announced it was keeping the incumbent around at least through July 2021. If two more six-month extensions are picked up, the tenure could last until July 2022.
Fleischmann said there are 70 or more buildings to be torn down as the cleanup moves to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Y-12 National Security Complex. The member of the House Appropriations Committee, who represents an area around Oak Ridge, also cited the ongoing construction of a new mercury treatment facility at the site that will help remediate mercury from old buildings at the property.
In 1999, the first major structure to be removed was one of the first built at the site — the K-1001 Administration Building. The facility held offices for contractors and the DOE Office of Environmental Management. Jay Mullis, the top DOE nuclear cleanup official at Oak Ridge, said his first office was in that building. He added that two other offices where he worked were in facilities there that have also been demolished.
“If I come to your office you better watch out,” Mullis said, drawing laughs.
