SUMMERLIN, NEV. — Started during the Manhattan Project days of the 1940s, nuclear technology continues to figure into plans for re-industrialization of the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee, attendees at the Radwaste Summit heard here Wednesday.
Laura Wilkerson, DOE’s acting manager for the Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management and Kevin Ironside, reindustrialization manager for contractor United Cleanup Oak Ridge (UCOR) talked about future economic uses of the site during the conference hosted this week by Exchange Monitor Publications.
Kairos Power, Alameda, Calif., bought 185 acres of reclaimed land at Oak Ridge in July 2021 and hopes to build a “next generation” nuclear power plant by 2026. The project is a collaboration with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), according to slides from the joint Wilkerson-Ironside presentation.
This past April, Kairos announced it is part of a consortium with TVA and other electric utilities to develop the company’s advanced fluoride salt-cooled high-temperature reactor technology.
Likewise, advanced reactor company X-energy’s subsidiary Triso-X is part of a nuclear reactor fuel fabrication partnership with DOE that could be up and running in 2025, according to the Oak Ridge presentation. X-energy.
In other development plans, a Knoxville company, Carbon Rivers, is teaming up with the University of Tennessee and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory to work on new glass fiber recycling technology at Oak Ridge.
The DOE has already transferred 1,300 acres to the community reuse organization for industrialization. Design is underway for a general aviation airport and construction on that project should start in August 2023, according to the slide presentation. The 32,000-acre Oak Ridge federal complex includes the East Tennessee Technology Park, the former K-25 gaseous diffusion plant property, the Y-12 National Security Complex and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
