PHOENIX — After finishing major demolition and remediation last fall of the Y-12 National Security Complex’s Biology center or “mouse house,” the Department of Energy cleanup contractor is “very close” to turning the property back to Y-12 prime Consolidated Nuclear Services, a speaker told the Waste Management Symposia session Wednesday.
“It is imminent,” Tommy Morgan, chief engineer at UCOR, the DOE Office of Environmental Management’s Amentum-Jacobs partnership in charge of remediation of the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee.
Taking down the Biology Complex will enable CNS and the National Nuclear Security Administration to proceed with plans for a Lithium Processing Facility. The lithium will be used to supply tritium for weapons work.
UCOR is “taking a victory lap” after demolishing the building, which while structurally sound, “was kind of a scary place,” Morgan said.
The facility “looked like it was about to fall down,” Morgan said. The cleanup workers discovered dead mice and birds in the structure and a “massive beehive” inside a wall. In addition to such nasty surprises, there were two roof-mounted stacks atop Building 9207 — one of them 100-feet high — which had to be taken down, Morgan said.
The stacks “fell exactly as we planned away from the workers on the ground,” Morgan said.
In addition, there were 800 tons of material containing asbestos, Morgan said. There was also a significant amount of mercury in the building, although not as much radioactive material as in some other Oak Ridge buildings, he added.
The Biology Complex building was an “excess” facility and Environmental Management contractor UCOR was eager to show its ability to work with the NNSA on this demolition project, Morgan said.
