The regionally famous Bull Run smokestack was demolished this summer by the Tennessee Valley Authority as the federal utility phases out the use of coal to generate electricity. Climate activists are alarmed by TVA’s plans to replace coal with natural gas, itself a powerful greenhouse gas pollutant.  Tennessee Valley Authority

What’s next for mammoth utility after demolition of Claxton, Tenn. landmark stack?

CLAXTON — In a matter of seconds, the old smokestack fell like a giant tree, heaving clouds of dust as it hit the ground. Workers set off the implosion with a loud boom at the base of the towering smokestack on June 28, at Bull Run Fossil Plant just outside of Oak Ridge. Minutes earlier, the shorter and more modern ‘scrubber’ bit the dust in similar fashion.

U.S. Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn.; U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright; Rep. Chuck Fleischmann; R-Chattanooga; and Open AI CEO Greg Brockman spoke with the press during a tour of Oak Ridge-area nuclear facilities.  Ben Pounds/Hellbender Press

Visit by energy secretary doesn’t address program cuts as former fracking CEO downplays climate change threat; visit comes following diversity program cuts; full extent of Oak Ridge impacts still unknown

Hellbender Press typically avoids the use of anonymous sources. The sources in this story spoke on condition they not be identified so they could speak on a sensitive matter.

This story will be updated. The original stories continue below.

OAK RIDGE — U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright denied that climate change was a “crisis” and downplayed its threat during a visit to an international hub of scientific expertise rattled by early actions of the second Trump Administration. His visit did little to allay fears of cuts to staff and programs at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where the most concrete signs of change have been the dismantling of diversity efforts.

Wright visited ORNL on Feb. 28, and at a press conference defended the Trump administration’s actions on climate change, energy sources and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a group headed by Elon Musk that has recommended cutting programs and staff in various government departments.

He did not announce any layoffs at the lab itself, however, and implied research related to climate there will continue. Oak Ridge National Laboratory is home to many kinds of related research, including at the Climate Change Science Institute. CCSI does modeling and gathers data on the climate, as well as working on solutions to the problem.

Wright promoted research on artificial intelligence, which he called “Manhattan Project II,” and nuclear energy, and he appeared alongside Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., Rep. Chuck Fleischmann R-Chattanooga and Open AI CEO Greg Brockman, who also spoke and answered questions. 

“I don’t think you’ll see any reduction in the science that we do regarding climate change or any of these other really big questions,” said Wright in response to a reporter’s questions about how cuts at the lab might affect climate change-related research at ORNL, which his department funds through a partnership with contractor Battelle and the University of Tennessee. He said, however, he still “100 percent” believed there was no climate “crisis” and said scientific reports backed up his view. 

“We haven’t seen an increase in the frequency or intensity of hurricanes, floods, droughts, storms. Wildfires are on an uptick because we stopped managing our forests,” he said. “Deaths from extreme weather, which is what you hear the press and politicians’ fearmongering about, it declined over 90 percent in my lifetime as the population’s grown. So climate change is a real phenomenon. It’s just not even remotely close to the world’s biggest problem.” He also said an intergovernmental climate change report also showed economists saying climate change was not as important as issues like education, free trade and “empowerment.”

These claims are a mixed bag of truth. While the frequency of hurricanes hitting the United States, for example, hasn’t increased, a recent Columbia University study showed the tropical cyclones’ intensity for the East and Gulf Coasts has. Also unmentioned by Wright was any impact the climate has on disease or health conditions apart from extreme weather, a subject on which experts at Tennessee’s own Vanderbilt University have sounded the alarm.

Wright was CEO of a hydraulic fracking company, Liberty Energy, before his appointment.

“It’s a real thing, but nothing in the science of climate change or in the economics of climate change shows it to be the world’s biggest problem,” Wright said. “When you call something a crisis, it means we don’t have time to stop and think. We’ve just got to take action. That’s exactly the opposite of what climate science is.”

During the meeting, he also defended Musk, DOGE and Trump’s actions generally while not announcing any such cuts for the civilian research at Oak Ridge National Laboratory or the weapons maintenance at Y-12, which is managed by a different contractor. A reporter at the event mentioned an earlier instance in which workers at Y-12 National Security Complex received termination letters that were then rescinded. While the reporter asked him to offer reassurance on job security, he sidestepped that question.

Illustrated photo from a presentation on the Oak Ridge Airport project to Roane County officials at the Roane County Courthouse in Kingston on Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017 soon after the state appropriated $15 million for use toward the now-paused airport project.  Roane County via Oak Ridge Today

City: Airport ‘paused’ because of nearby planned uranium-enrichment facility

OAK RIDGE — The city paused its long-simmering and controversial project to build a general aviation airport in the western part of Oak Ridge.

Oak Ridge government announced it paused the plan to build the airport in part of East Tennessee Technology Park because another nearby project is going forward: Orano USA’s Project Ike. Orano announced its plans for that project, a large uranium enrichment facility, Wednesday, Sept. 4; the city of Oak Ridge announced its pause the following week, Wednesday Sept. 11.

The city stated it wanted to “re-evaluate the proposed location” for the airport due to the Orano plan. City communications specialist Lauren Gray declined to name any other locations the city might be considering, saying plans weren’t that definite yet.

(Hellbender Press won a first-place award from the East Tennessee Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists for its previous coverage of the proposed Oak Ridge airport).

Aerial view of the East Tennessee Technology Park in August 2024 following the completion of all demolition and soil remediation projects at the former uranium enrichment complex by DOE’s Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management and contractor UCOR.  Department of Energy

Final remediation could add spark to regional technology and alternative-energy industry

OAK RIDGE — Workers finished clearing more than a million tons of nuclear-contaminated soil from a long-toxic site in the Atomic City dating to the World War II and Cold War eras.

While the site was established to enriched uranium for the atomic bomb the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima toward the end of WWII, its future may lie in solar power and peaceful use of nuclear technology. The cleanup also ties into broader questions and controversies about storage of wastes from other Oak Ridge sites.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management (OREM) and its contractor United Cleanup Oak Ridge (UCOR) removed and disposed of more than 554,000 cubic yards of soil, equaling nearly 50,000 dump truck loads, according to OREM.

“Today is a significant and meaningful step toward completing our ultimate mission at the East Tennessee Technology Park,” said OREM Manager Jay Mullis. “Our progress has transformed the site from an unusable liability into an economic asset for the Oak Ridge community.”

Ed Blandford, Kairos Chief Technology Officer, chats with Oak Ridge Environmental Management’s Ben Williams after an event celebrating the cleanup of radioactive soils at Oak Ridge’s K-25 site.  Ben Pounds/Hellbender Press

Tennessee Citizens for Wilderness Planning Executive Director Nancy Manning stands in a wetland in the Oak Ridge Cedar Barrens. She is cultivating a project that involves students from nearby Jefferson Middle School.  Ben Pounds/Hellbender Press

New TCWP director already helping our kids ‘Explore and Restore’

OAK RIDGE — The students looked for tiny animals, tested water samples and took careful note of plants. Their recorded observations of Oak Ridge Cedar Barrens, a state natural area, were part of their class at the adjacent Jefferson Middle School (JMS), but volunteers from many outside organizations helped them with their scientific processes. They joined the students on the side of a wetland as they walked through the tall native grasses beneath the red cedars that give the small protected area its name.

Among these volunteers was new Tennessee Citizens for Wilderness Planning Executive Director Nancy Manning. Manning became TCWP’s chief operating agent Aug. 1 of last year, succeeding Sandra Goss after they worked together for a month. Centered in Oak Ridge, TCWP has a storied history preserving and maintaining not just the small Oak Ridge Cedar Barrens area but also Obed Wild and Scenic River and Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area. While Manning is continuing that work, she’s put a special focus on fighting “nature deficit disorder” a term credited to Richard Louv and his book Last Child in the Woods.

The phrase refers to a lack of direct experience with nature, and Louv tied such a deficit in his 2005 book to psychological disorders and obesity. So Manning conceived the “explore and restore” program, which gives students a chance to both study and maintain natural areas, and brought it with her from Texas to Tennessee. 

Vicky Wallace gets assistance crossing a creek in her off-road GRIT wheelchair during an adaptive camping outing along Cooper Road Trail in Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  Yvonne Rogers/Hellbender Press

Adapted to their environment, wheelchair users venture into Smokies backcountry

TOWNSEND — Four wheelchair users ventured this month to an Abrams Creek backcountry campsite in a first for the Smokies.

Borne by GRIT Freedom Chairs, the able trekkers arrived June 8 in a collaborative event featuring Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Knox County, Kampgrounds of America Foundation and Catalyst Sports. The intrepid group had headed up about a mile of the wide, gravel Cooper Road Trail over hills toward Campsite 1, past horses, along and through streams, finally reaching their campsite. The three-wheeled, arm-powered GRIT chairs are designed for off-road routes.

For much of the route the adaptive hikers used their arms to move their chairs, but other people accompanied them on foot, sometimes helping them up difficult hills or over streams. Those in the chairs enjoyed the mountain water that rushed over their feet.

Park Ranger Katie Corrigan talked about highlights of the natural world around them and led discussions on the concepts of wildness and wilderness. Just like many other backcountry campers, the group of adventurers ate s’mores and slept in tents at the campsite before heading back down Cooper Road to the trailhead the next day. 

Regina Santore with the Wild Ones Smoky Mountains Chapter puts garlic mustard into a bag during an April volunteer event along a greenway in Oak Ridge.  Ben Pounds/Hellbender Press

Volunteers fight exotic and invasive garlic mustard on Oak Ridge greenway 

OAK RIDGE — Plants from around the world are overrunning the Southeast’s wild places, causing problems for native flora and fauna.

It’s a problem that’s grabbed the attention and work of dedicated organizations. One of them, the Tennessee Invasive Plant Council has many strategies to solve this problem: volunteer weed-pulling events, guides to help gardeners find native plants from which to choose, and even legislation. Its vice president, Jamie Herold, has many thoughts on the issue. She was eager to share them over pizza after a morning of pulling one such invasive, garlic mustard, at an event in Oak Ridge organized by Tennessee Citizens for Wilderness Planning, and Greenways Oak Ridge. 

The event involved pulling garlic mustard, a plant originally from Europe, from the edge of the woods behind apartments on West Vanderbilt Avenue. This area includes the Wildflower Greenway, a trail full of wildflowers that locals have been eager to protect from the garlic mustard’s domination.