Workers tear down the K-832 Cooling Water Pumphouse at East Tennessee Technology Park, the former K-25 site in west Oak Ridge. (Photo courtesy U.S. Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management)
Note: This is an edited version of a story that was first published by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management in an EM Update on Friday, July 28.
Workers began demolishing the Poplar Creek facilities this month, bringing Oak Ridge’s environmental management, or EM, program closer to completing major cleanup at the East Tennessee Technology Park by 2020.
“Demolishing the Poplar Creek facilities is significant for our program because it continues the visible transformation of ETTP’s skyline, and it removes the most contaminated facilities remaining at the site,” said Jay Mullis, acting manager of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management, or OREM.
OREM has taken down more than 400 facilities at ETTP, including all five former uranium enrichment facilities. That’s about 10 million square feet of buildings that have been removed.
ETTP, also known as Heritage Center, is the former K-25 site in west Oak Ridge. The site was built to help enrich uranium for atomic bombs during the top-secret Manhattan Project in World War II, and it continued to operate through the Cold War, including to enrich uranium for nuclear power plants. [Read more…]
