URS-CH2M Oak Ridge (UCOR), the managing contractor for cleanup of the East Tennessee Technology Park at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site, is quickly moving forward on the teardown of the Poplar Creek facilities.
The facilities are a network of 23 buildings constructed in the 1940s and 1950s to support uranium enrichment operations at the old Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant.
Since beginning demolition in mid-June, the contractor has already completely torn down two facilities: the K-832 Cooling Water Pumphouse and the K-832-H Cooling Tower.
The 5,500-square-foot cooling tower is one of the newer buildings at the site. It was constructed in 1985 to replace a Manhattan Project-era facility and operated for about one year.
The pumphouse was about twice the size of the cooling tower and recirculated cooling water through the plant’s uranium enrichment equipment from 1946 to 1985. The building was closed and repurposed to store equipment in 1985 when DOE ceased gaseous diffusion processes at Oak Ridge.
UCOR spokesman Mike Butler said demolition on the entirety of the Poplar Creek network is about 12 percent complete and nearing 75 percent deactivation. Deactivation is a hazard abatement process that entails removing leftover chemical or nuclear hazards such as asbestos, uranium, mercury, or lead.
“Each Poplar Creek facility has its own unique system, configuration, and facility design,” Butler said of the challenges in the network’s teardown. “Accounting for these differences can require additional time during the deactivation process as we work to identify and properly address all of the hazards to ensure work is accomplished safely.”
The demolition is part of the DOE Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management’s goal to by 2020 completely remediate and turn over the East Tennessee Technology Park for other uses, including a regional airport and a section of the Manhattan Project National Historic Park.
UCOR President Ken Rueter said last month the contractor is on track to complete the site turnover about $150 million under its original $2.5 billion budget.
To date, OREM has taken down more than 400 facilities at ETTP, including all five former uranium enrichment facilities. As buildings are demolished and their sites are decontaminated, UCOR turns them over to the Community Reuse Organization of East Tennessee (CROET) to reindustrialize the land for the city of Oak Ridge. CROET already oversees about 1,300 acres of the 2,200-acre park.
