Displaying items by tag: oak ridge office of environmental management

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

Editor’s note: As reported in Hellbender Press, the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management (OREM) was reprimanded by the Southern Environmental Law Center for neglecting its duty to follow guidelines and proper procedures mandated by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Of immediate concern was OREM’s pretext and information — or specifically lack of pertinent information — released ahead of the public meeting on May 17, 2022 about its project for a new “Environmental Management Disposal Facility” (EMDF).

With regard to NEPA compliance, Oak Ridge Operations has been the black sheep in DOE’s stable because it never prepared the required site-wide environmental impact statement (EIS) for the Oak Ridge Reservation (ORR). At said public meeting, Virginia Dale, Corporate Fellow Emeritus of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, commented on another tangent of shortcomings — not spelled out by Federal law — but matters of common sense, competent decision making and good community spirit.