ENERGY DEPARTMENT COMPLETES
CLEANUP OF LEGACY WASTE
 

A worker completes a final check of a concrete cask containing a “monolith” of low-level radioactive waste prior to its shipment for disposal off the Oak Ridge Reservation. The cask is one of 232 that were shipped as part of the Legacy Waste Disposition Program recently completed by Bechtel Jacobs Co. LLC under contract to the Department of Energy.

OAK RIDGE, Tenn. – The Department of Energy has accomplished a major milestone in environmental cleanup with the safe disposition of over 1 million cubic feet of legacy waste, a key component for the Oak Ridge Reservation Environmental Management Program.  Bechtel Jacobs Company, LLC, the Department’s environmental cleanup contractor, recently completed the project safely and on-time.

“This is a major accomplishment and an important first step in our commitment to state and federal regulators, and the public in environmental cleanup of the Oak Ridge Reservation,” said Gerald Boyd, Manager of the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Office.

Storage of these materials occupied over 27,000 containers, including concrete casks, large metal boxes, and Sealand^® containers.  The waste consisted of a variety of materials, including radioactive scrap metal, contaminated soil, construction debris, organic liquids, waste water and sludge residues.  The Department’s contract with Bechtel Jacobs required the safe management, treatment and disposal of all legacy low-level waste and legacy mixed low-level waste stored on the Oak Ridge Reservation by September 30, 2005.

“Our project team overcame a number of challenges to accomplish this milestone safely and on time,” said Bechtel Jacobs President and General Manager Mike Hughes.  “It was a team effort that involved our DOE customer, state and federal regulators, our subcontractors and the public.”

A shipment of boxes containing low-level radioactive waste departs the Oak Ridge Reservation for disposal off site.  The shipment is one of hundreds that were disposed of on and off the Reservation as part of the Legacy Waste Disposition Program.
 

The legacy waste included about 1.2 million cubic feet of low-level waste and 36,000 cubic feet of mixed low-level waste located across the Reservation (East Tennessee Technology Park, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Y-12 National Security Complex).  This volume equates to a football field covered more than 30 feet high.

Over the past 16 months, Bechtel Jacobs and its subcontractors supporting this effort have worked over a half million man-hours without a lost-time injury.

Legacy waste removal and disposal is the first of three major milestones of the Department’s Accelerated Cleanup Contract.  Also included is the remediation of the Melton Valley area of Oak Ridge National Laboratory by 2006, and the demolition of several hundred buildings, including the massive K-25 facility at East Tennessee Technology Park, by 2008.

The Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management is committed to accelerated risk reduction and cleanup of the environmental legacy of the nation’s nuclear weapons program and government-sponsored nuclear energy research.  The program is one of the largest and most diverse and technically complex environmental cleanup programs in the world and includes responsibility for the cleanup of 114 sites across the country, including those on the Oak Ridge Reservation.

The Legacy Waste Disposition Team shipped 232 “monoliths” of low-level radioactive waste to the Nevada Test Site for disposal in 2004. Wastes from storage tanks in the Melton Valley area of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory were mixed with cement and cast into large cylinders (about 6.5 feet high and 6.5 feet in diameter).  Each cylinder contained approximately 800 gallons of waste solidified in the cement. These cylinders came to be known as monoliths.  The monoliths, which weigh approximately 10 tons each, were stored in non-radioactive concrete casks that doubled as shipping casks when it came time for disposal.  The casks weigh another 25 tons each and are about two feet higher and two feet larger around than the monoliths themselves.

-DOE-

R-05-032