URS-CH2M Oak Ridge (UCOR), the cleanup prime for the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee, has awarded a $1.4 million contract to GEM Technologies to begin preparing the site of a new mercury treatment facility at Y-12 National Complex.
By the end of November, GEM will begin demolishing old Oak Ridge electric cables and water, sewer, and storm water lines, and start extending Y-12’s newer utilities to the construction area.
UCOR said GEM will complete its work by early fall 2018 and construction on the Outfall 200 Mercury Treatment Facility will begin shortly thereafter.
Once built, the treatment facility should reduce the amount of mercury-contaminated groundwater exiting Y-12.
UCOR estimates that about 2 million pounds of mercury used to split lithium isotopes at the nuclear-weapon complex during the Cold War has been lost to the environment. The contractor said that just between 1950 and 1982, about 240,000 pounds made it into the Upper East Fork Poplar Creek.
Constructing the mercury treatment facility is part of UCOR’s scope-based $2.6 billion contract with the Department of Energy to remediate Oak Ridge sites. The contractor plans to finish cleaning up and turning over the nearby East Tennessee Technology Park—once the site of the Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant—by the end of 2020.
The mercury treatment facility is necessary for further cleanup to begin at Y-12, because once some of the old buildings are disrupted, more contaminants can leak into the groundwater.
Right now, UCOR’s work at Y-12 ends in 2024 when the mercury treatment facility is operational.
But UCOR President and Project Manager Ken Rueter said the contractor plans to bid on the Energy Department’s contract to clean up Y-12’s contaminated excess facilities once it becomes available.
