In response to questions about use of an old reactor facility on the federal government’s Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee, the Department of Energy confirmed that classified activities associated with nonproliferation have been taking place at the ridge-top site.
Claire Sinclair, a spokeswoman for the DOE site office at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, said, “the Oak Ridge National Laboratory is no longer conducting environmental studies at the Tower Shielding Reactor site.”
When asked what environmental studies she was referencing, Sinclair responded, “The nature of the research activities is classified.” She acknowledged the project was related to nonproliferation.
Sinclair would not say who sponsored the work or provide other details of the activities at the site, which is located on Copper Ridge near the western boundary of the DOE property. ORNL routinely does work for non-DOE agencies, including the Department of Defense, the State Department, EPA, and the National Nuclear Security Administration.
“Currently, ORNL is storing materials (at the Tower Shielding site) from previous research,” Sinclair said.
She said those materials would have to be disposed of before the Office of Science returns control of the site to DOE’s Office of Environmental Management. EM plans to conduct final cleanup of the site in the mid-2030s.
The two DOE offices have traded responsibility for the site over the years, but the Office of Science has had the location for the past decade.
It’s not clear if there are plans for other projects at the Tower Shielding Reactor site. Science and EM signed a new memorandum of agreement last year, with the Office of Science continuing ownership of the site for the next five years.
“Due to ongoing research and development work supported by this facility, an extension through Sept. 30, 2020, is requested,” Johnny Moore, DOE’s Oak Ridge science chief, wrote in a May 29, 2015, memo.
The secluded site has been used for many government projects over the years, some more secret than others. The site is known most for its 1950s work on the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion program, which was an effort to develop nuclear-powered airplanes.
As part of that effort, tall towers were constructed at the Oak Ridge site, and they were used to hoist a small nuclear reactor into the air so that radiation measurements could be taken to determine how shielding functioned to protect the airplane’s pilot and crew.
In the 1970s and ‘80s, the Department of Energy used the site to conduct drop tests of nuclear waste containers. The spent-fuel casks were dropped onto a concrete pad to simulate the impact of a traffic accident.
Over the years, the reactor was used to study nuclear power technologies and radiation shielding for space applications, as well as missile silo protection.
In 2003, DOE announced that it had completed removal of the reactor’s nuclear fuel, setting the stage for the eventual cleanup of the site.
