Oak Ridge kicks off property transfer for Orano

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Orano-USA has started the property transfer and licensing process for its planned uranium enrichment plant at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site, the site’s top federal cleanup official said here Wednesday.

Orano-USA announced in September that Oak Ridge was its “preferred site” for its uranium enrichment plant that it would build using state funding and Department of Energy land.

“We’ve kicked the property transfer process off, but… that’s a very lengthy process,” John (Jay) Mullis, manager of the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management, told the ExchangeMonitor here Wednesday after he spoke at a panel during the Energy Technology and Environmental Business Association’s 25th annual Business Opportunities and Technical Conference.

“So they’ve needed to get in there while we still own the property and do some geotech work and things like that,” Mullins said.

Mullis also said that Orano and Oak Ridge National Laboratory signed a real estate license to give Orano access to Oak Ridge’s SSP-2 site.

“That will give them now pretty free access to the areas they need to have access to,” Mullis added.

The facility would be 750,000 square feet and employ about 300 people in Roane County, Tenn., according to the original press release from the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development.

An Orano spokesperson told the Exchange Monitor in an email in September that there was no timeline for building the facility as of Wednesday.