Oak Ridge Today

Better late than never: Postponed fireworks shows on Saturday

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Information from WYSH Radio

A few of the area’s postponed Independence Day celebrations and fireworks shows will be held today, Saturday, July 13.

In Kingston, “Smokin’ the Water” begins at 11 a.m. at City Park with a car show, a watermelon eating contest, a homemade raft race, a kids area, vendors, games, laser tag, and more. Fireworks will be shot at dark.

Lake City’s annual celebration will be held beginning at 2 p.m. with a car show and games on the ball field. Fireworks will be shot at 10 p.m. Merle FM’s own Big Rick—who celebrates his birthday today—will broadcast from the Lake City celebration Saturday from 6 to 10 p.m.

Anderson County Fair starts Sunday with pageants

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Information from WYSH Radio

The Anderson County Fair starts Sunday at Anderson County High School with the Tiny Miss and Fairest of the Fair pageants.

The Tiny Miss pageant will be held at 2 p.m. on Sunday and the fairest of the Fair—including the Princess, Junior, and Senior divisions—will be held at 7 p.m. Admission is $5 and kids ages six and under will get in free. For more information, visit www.andersoncountyfairtn.com.

Johnson Gap Road railroad bridge closed

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Information from WYSH Radio

Anderson County Road Superintendent Gary Long announced Friday that the railroad bridge on Johnson Gap Road will be closed until further notice while railroad crews make safety-related repairs. Johnson Gap Road is between Sulphur Springs and Dutch Valley roads northeast of Oak Ridge.

Milky white water, half-dozen dead minnows, but no hazardous materials found

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Hazmat Spill Oak Ridge Civic Center Creek

The Oak Ridge Fire Department responds to a possible hazardous materials spill on Thursday evening at a creek that flows through the Oak Ridge Civic Center. (Photo courtesy ORFD)

The water was milky white and there were a half-dozen dead minnows on Thursday evening, but the Oak Ridge Fire Department was unable to find any hazardous materials in a small creek that flows through Alvin K. Bissell Park in the center of the city.

“We couldn’t detect what it actually was, and we couldn’t find any place that it was introduced into the stream,” ORFD Chief Darryl Kerley said Friday.

Kerley said medium and larger fish in the area were okay and so was a snapping turtle. [Read more…]

Ulster Project has annual Irish Fry on Saturday

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The Ulster Project has its annual Irish Fry on Saturday.

It will include a full traditional breakfast of eggs, sausage, tomatoes, beans, soda bread, juice, coffee, and tea served by Ulster Project teens from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. in St. Mary’s Church cafeteria in Oak Ridge. The breakfast costs $8 per person and $7 for seniors (65+).

Price Florist gets another 30-day reprieve from demolition, repair order

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Price Florist

A city board has declared Price Florist on Oak Ridge Turnpike a nuisance and unfit for human occupation and use, and members have given the property owner 30 days to develop a repair plan, get a demolition permit, or reach an agreement to sell it.

Price Florist on Oak Ridge Turnpike got another 30-day reprieve from a repair or demolition order.

Property owner Patricia Warren of Crossville said she is cleaning up the property and has three serious prospective buyers. Two, including a chain that sells “products that you consume,” would demolish the building, and the third would relocate an existing Oak Ridge business from the edge of town to the 0.35-acre site in the heart of the city, Warren said. [Read more…]

Officials to offer update on Alexander Inn project tonight

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Guest House

The Guest House in Oak Ridge, now known as the Alexander Inn, as it looked during the top-secret Manhattan Project in World War II. (Photo by Ed Westcott)

Rick Dover, general manager of the company converting the historic Alexander Inn into an assisted living center, will provide an update on the project during an Oak Ridge Heritage and Preservation Association meeting this evening.

Also present will be Knox Heritage’s Ethiel Garlington, director of preservation field services for the East Tennessee Preservation Alliance.

The meeting starts at 7 p.m. today (Thursday, July 11) in the Midtown Community Center at 102 Robertsville Road at the corner of Robertsville Road and Oak Ridge Turnpike. [Read more…]

Woman struck by car in Clinton parking lot

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Information from WYSH Radio

A Clinton woman was injured Wednesday night when she was struck by a car while leaving Walmart.

The Clinton Police Department reported that 42-year-old Stephanie Meadows told them that she had walked out of the middle section of doors at the front entrance of Walmart and was almost across the road in the pedestrian crosswalk when she was hit by a white Volvo sedan. She was hit on her left side and was knocked across the hood and on to the asphalt. [Read more…]

US, international partners remove last highly enriched uranium from Vietnam

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Vietnam HEU Removal

A worker prepares a special container carrying highly enriched uranium before loading onto a cargo plane for repatriation to Russia. (Photo courtesy NNSA)

Official in the United States, Vietnam, and Russia announced this month that they have removed 11 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, or HEU, from the Dalat Nuclear Research Institute in Dalat, Vietnam.

“With this shipment, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam became the eleventh country from which all HEU has been removed since President Obama’s 2009 announcement in Prague of an international effort to secure all vulnerable nuclear material around the world,” the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration said in a press release. “The U.S. will work with our international partners to remove the remaining HEU from another country by the end of 2013 in support of this global effort and the goals of the Nuclear Security Summits.” [Read more…]

CASL milestone validates reactor model using TVA data

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CASL VERA Simulation

This CASL visualization shows the thermal distribution of neutrons in Watts Bar Unit 1 Cycle 1 reactor core at initial criticality, as calculated by the VERA program. (Image courtesy Oak Ridge National Laboratory)

The Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors this week announced that its scientists have successfully completed the first full-scale simulation of an operating nuclear reactor.

Headquartered at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, CASL is modeling nuclear reactors on supercomputers to help researchers better understand reactor performance with much higher reliability than previously available methods, with the goal of ultimately increasing power output, extending reactor life, and reducing waste.

Simulation results from the Virtual Environment for Reactor Applications (VERA) program, which was developed by CASL, were compared with actual data provided by the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Watts Bar Nuclear Plant in Tennessee, which confirmed its accuracy. [Read more…]

In unusual move, Council removes Beer Board member

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The Oak Ridge City Council on Monday took the unusual step of removing a member of the city’s beer board after two members said he had been disruptive and argumentative, and turned what had been smooth-running and efficient meetings into “veritable circuses.”

The disruptive behavior of Oak Ridge Beer Permit Board member Pedro Otaduy had caused at least two board members to consider resigning, which would cripple the board’s ability to act, City Manager Mark Watson said. [Read more…]

TVA releasing dam water to reduce Tennessee River flooding

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The Tennessee Valley Authority on Wednesday said it is working to move large volumes of water—as much as one million gallons per second in some places—along the Tennessee River system to reduce potentially damaging flooding from record rainfall.

TVA said it prepared for this event by lowering reservoir levels on the main channel of the Tennessee River beginning the last week of June, leaving some areas below normal for this time of year. [Read more…]