The Environmental Journal of Southern Appalachia
Wednesday, 28 August 2024 11:42

Contractors finish scraping remnants of war industry at former K-25 site in Oak Ridge

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Cleanup complete at ETTPAerial 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.

An event Aug. 21 celebrated the recent soil cleanup milestone at the site of the former K-25 Gaseous Diffusion Process Building. ‘K-25’ also was the collective name for the expanse of related mission support facilities in west Oak Ridge. After decommissioning, this site was renamed East Tennessee Technology Park to attract commercial enterprises.
 

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.”

 
k25 photo2Ed 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
 

OREM and UCOR concluded building demolitions at the site in 2020. That encompassed tearing down more than 500 structures with a combined footprint that would span 225 football fields. Workers have since removed foundation slabs and any polluted soil beneath them.

Where has the waste gone?

Ben Williams with OREM said most of the 554,000 cubic yards of soil went to the Environmental Management Waste Management Facility, which is also in Oak Ridge. But the Department of Energy is rapidly reaching capacity at that site because it is used for more types of waste than it originally intended. 

Cleanup continues on Oak Ridge locations beyond K-25. However, a pending lawsuit challenges DOE’s plans to build another Oak Ridge landfill to meet that need. The suit maintains that the plan violates federal statutes and regulations by failing to adequately assess and avert risks to human and environmental health. Radioactive isotopes must be prevented from contaminating groundwater and Bear Creek, a tributary of the Clinch River, for thousands of years. 

Solar and nuclear 

The former K-25 site is now a place for private industry with a focus on non-fossil-fuel energy. Three solar array fields already on the site provide renewable electricity to the grid. 

Kairos Power began construction in July on its Hermes low-power demonstration reactor to try out new types of nuclear technology for later commercial use. 

Kairos plans to finish construction by 2026. Kairos has described this future fluoride salt-cooled, high-temperature reactor (KP-FHR) as safer and requiring less containment structures than the kind of nuclear reactors currently generating power. 

Kairos Chief Technology Officer Ed Blandford said these nuclear plants would complement renewable energy. He echoed the words of Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, who spoke in favor of running small nuclear reactors during gaps in renewable power.

“What we believe is that there’s a strong need for carbon-free base load power. It’s very difficult to get that from intermittent power sources and so right now that’s being backfilled by natural gas.

“So to really have reliable and baseload power, that’s really where nuclear can make a difference,” he said. He said Kairos’s goal was to demonstrate nuclear energy could be done safely, efficiently and cost-effectively. 

He said he is talking with TVA about future use of his company’s technology but the Oak Ridge reactor will not immediately generate power for the grid.

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Last modified on Thursday, 29 August 2024 18:59
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