Federal cleanup crews are preparing to demolish three support facilities for the historic Graphite Reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
The demolition of the support facilities is planned for next year.
The deactivation work at the three facilities is being done by UCOR, a cleanup contractor for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management.
The buildings include the filter house, or Building 3002; fan house, or Building 3003; and exhaust stack, or Building 3018. They were previously used to filter and release exhaust from Graphite Reactor operations.
“Their removal will continue OREM’s transformation of ORNL’s central campus, eliminate hazards, and enhance visitor access to a historic landmark,” according to “EM Update,” an electronic newsletter from the DOE Office of Environmental Management.
The Graphite Reactor is the oldest reactor in the world, and it was designated a historic landmark in 1966. It is a key component of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park. It was the first facility built at ORNL during the Manhattan Project, and it will remain for visitors to learn about the site’s history, the newsletter said.
The filter house was built in 1948, and it filtered air from the air‐cooled Graphite Reactor before it was sent out through the fan house and adjacent stack. Building 3003 housed the fan room, and it provided ventilation for the reactor and then sent the exhaust to the 200-foot-tall stack, which dates to 1943.
“Maneuvering equipment to support deactivation has been challenging,” the newsletter said. The support facilities are located on a hill about 100 feet from the reactor and within 20 feet of a fence line for a neighboring facility.
DOE said much of the work throughout the last year has involved crews sampling the buildings and ducts.
“This characterization work supports future open-air demolition of the facilities,” DOE said.
Ready access was not available to Building 3002 (the filter house), so crews created an access door to enter and conduct sampling. Crews also drilled access into a duct connecting Building 3002 and Building 3003 (the fan house), enabling sampling crews to also start characterizing this area, DOE said.
“Once crews had access inside Building 3002, they conducted deactivation activities, including the removal of numerous filters,” the newsletter said. “They took out HEPA filters and hundreds of contaminated rock wool filters that were originally thought to be removed.
“With the filters out, employees are preparing to decontaminate Building 3002’s interior. That process includes vacuuming and using a solution for overall decontamination and again for targeted ‘hot spot’ decontamination. The final step involves applying a fixative to prevent the spread of contamination during demolition.
“Additionally, the team has started planning to place compressive low-strength material, which is a cement-like substance, in a duct between the Graphite Reactor and Building 3002 to isolate the facilities from each other prior to demolition.”
-DOE EM Update Contributor: Carol Hendrycks
More information will be added as it becomes available.
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