Workers remove combustible items from the Homogenous Reactor Experiment facility, or Building 7500, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which allowed the building’s heat detection system to be deactivated. (Photo by DOE/ORNL)
By DOE Office of Environmental Management
The U.S. Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management and its cleanup contractor in Oak Ridge are taking steps to remove risks and help prepare excess facilities for eventual demolition at the Y-12 National Security Complex and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Oak Ridge is home to more than 350 excess facilities totaling more than six million square feet. Many of them are several decades old.
Alan Stokes, associate director for the Planning and Execution Division in Oak Ridge’s Environmental Management, or EM, program, said during a panel discussion this month at the 2017 Waste Management Symposium in Phoenix that Oak Ridge has more than a quarter of the “higher-risk” excess facilities in the entire DOE inventory. [Read more…]
