OAK RIDGE, Tenn. — Demolition work continues in the Oak Ridge Reservation to safely remove and clean up contaminated structures and sites dating as far back as the Manhattan Project days.
United Cleanup Oak Ridge (UCOR) crews began tearing down the Criticality Experiment Laboratory, also known as Building 9213, at the Y-12 National Security Complex recently. The U.S. Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management said the late 1940s-era building has been closed since 1992 and was formerly used to conduct experiments with fissile uranium isotopes for nuclear reactors. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory later used it for its High Flux Isotope Reactor program.
The building sat dormant for decades until crews could disconnect all utilities to the facility in 2021 to bring it to the "cold and dark" stage.
“I am proud of what our workers have been able to safely accomplish at Y-12 under pandemic conditions and in a climate of supply chain shortages,” said UCOR President and CEO Ken Rueter. “In addition to starting demolition of this facility, our team demolished the last two buildings in the Biology Complex; fully deactivated the Old Steam Plant; and pressed forward with deactivating three former enrichment buildings that were part of the Manhattan Project.”
The old lab is the first structure to reach the demolition stage at Y-12 since the historic Biology Complex was torn down in 2021. Demolition work is expected to wrap up in fall 2022.
The Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management and UCOR have been ramping up cleanup efforts in recent years at Y-12, ORNL, and the East Tennessee Technology Park, which used to enrich uranium from the World War II Manhattan Project through 1985.
UCOR also recently modernized its waste management fleet in 2021, installing new technology on trucks that allows it to automate time-consuming waste logging and tracking that formally had to be done by hand.
Crews recently finished core cleanup and demolition at the ETTP in 2020, which was the DOE's largest environmental cleanup project of its kind. There is still work to be done to address soil and groundwater contamination at the site before the land can be transferred back for private and public use. That work is expected to continue into 2024.
“This facility demolition is one of our immediate priorities at Y-12, and we are in the process of preparing numerous others for demolition,” said Laura Wilkerson, acting manager of OREM. “These projects are eliminating risks and clearing land that can support national security missions in the future.”