The newly signed $1.3 trillion federal government omnibus spending bill for fiscal 2018 provides a boost for environmental remediation of the Department of Energy’s nuclear facilities at Oak Ridge, Tenn.
About $639 million will go toward cleaning up Oak Ridge’s Manhattan Project and Cold War sites—$141 million over 2017’s enacted levels and $125 million more than the DOE budget request. It includes $417.8 million in defense environmental cleanup funds for work at Y-12 National Security Complex and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and $214 million in uranium enrichment D&D funds that cover work at the former Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant, now known at the East Tennessee Technology Park.
Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said the funding will accelerate progress at all three major Oak Ridge cleanup sites. Alexander — who chairs the Senate Appropriations energy and water subcommittee — said his two Department of Energy defense priorities are modernizing nuclear weapons and cleaning up former Cold War sites.
In a statement, the senator praised increased funding for DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration and welcomed funds that support construction of Y-12’s Mercury Treatment Facility and Uranium Processing Facility.
The bill provides just over $17 million for the Outfall 200 Mercury Treatment Facility. The Energy Department earlier this month issued a request for proposals for contractors to build the plant, which will treat contaminated water at the site. Once up and running in 2024, it will also prevent further mercury contamination from escaping when demolition activities begin on contaminated excess facilities at Y-12.
The Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management (OREM) is scheduled to award the Mercury Treatment Facility construction contract this calendar year.
Under the “excess facilities” budget line item for DOE, $125 million will go toward decontaminating and decommissioning Y-12’s biology complex, of which about six buildings remain.
Another $194 million will be directed toward the Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant, which is quickly moving toward its 2020 cleanup completion goal.
Uranium-233 cleanup will receive $50 million, while $10 million will be directed toward a new CERCLA waste disposal cell, for which the proposed plan should be released this summer.
OREM plans this year to take down the old Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant’s Central Neutralization Facility, which treated wastewater from Cold-War era uranium enrichment operations, an office spokesman said. The site’s numerous Poplar Creek support facilities and a TSCA incinerator that burns PCBs and other chemicals will be demolished.
The Department of Energy also recently released its justification for environmental management operations in fiscal 2019, which begins Oct. 1. It would allocate a total of $409 million to OREM.
The uranium enrichment D & D fund would receive about $151 million, a decrease of $63 million from the 2018 omnibus. Trump requested $226 million for defense environmental cleanup in Oak Ridge, about a $191 million decrease from 2018.
Money for the Building 9212 cleanup is up to $3 million in the request, compared to $600,000 in 2018. The Mercury Treatment Facility would also get about a $6 million decrease from enacted 2018 levels, bringing it to $11 million.
