PHOENIX —One year into its new 10-year deal at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee, Amentum-led United Cleanup Oak Ridge has finished demolishing some key structures at the Y-12 National Security Complex, the remediation prime’s CEO said Wednesday.
All of the old contaminated buildings at Y-12 and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory “represent a risk,” United Cleanup Oak Ridge (UCOR) CEO Ken Rueter said during a Waste Management Symposia panel discussion. “They all have their little special surprise.”
About 20% of DOE’s high-risk facilities are at the Oak Ridge Site, Rueter said.
In October 2022, the 18-acre site property where the former Biology Complex, or “Mouse House,” stood was transferred to the semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Rueter said. The demolition of the asbestos-laden building was physically interesting given it had “secret rooms” and other unusual features, he said.
Administratively, the structure was unique because the building was owned by the DOE Office of Science, the land by NNSA and responsibility for cleanup rested with Environmental Management, Rueter said.
The NNSA plans to build its new Lithium Processing Facility on the Biology Complex site.
Y-12’s Criticality Experiment Lab, which had six-foot-thick walls, and Building 3010, the first research reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, came down in the past year, Rueter said. Building 3010, located in the central campus at Oak Ridge had to be taken down in relatively tight confines. There was not much room to swing a wrecking ball, Rueter said.
