DOE ponders options, cost of K-25 cleanup

11 November 2009/The Knoxville News Sentinel/KXVL/Copyright 2009 Scripps Howard Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Nobody is saying how much money it’s going to cost or when exactly it’s going to get finished, but Bechtel Jacobs Co. has presented the Department of Energy with a bunch of options — 22, all told — for completing the demolition of the massive K-25 building in Oak Ridge.
“Each one has a different price tag, or each one takes a longer or shorter time,” Joe Nemec, president of Bechtel Jacobs, DOE’s cleanup manager, said of the various plans.
The complicating issue is the presence of radioactive technetium-99, which was introduced into the uraniumenrichment processes decades ago and requires special treatment. The amounts of Tc-99 are relatively small, but the material is highly radioactive and mobile in the environment. Therefore, debris that’s contaminated with technetium won’t qualify for disposal at DOE’s Oak Ridge nuclear landfill and must be sent to the Nevada Test Site for disposal in the desert.
Segregating the Tc-99 materials and shipping them off-site is time-consuming and costly. But the big issue at the moment is simply verifying where the technetium is and where it isn’t inside the massive K-25 structure and its miles-long maze of pipes and processing equipment.



Nemec said Bechtel Jacobs believes that the technetium contamination is confi ned within five of the east wing’s 24 process cells. That, however, must be validated by extensive sampling, and DOE and environmental regulators still must agree on a sampling plan, although Nemec indicated there’s a general understanding of what’s needed.



Bechtel Jacobs, meanwhile, is proceeding with demolition of the west wing — where Tc-99 isn’t a problem — and shipping mountains of contaminated construction rubble to the nuclear landfi ll several miles away in Bear Creek Valley. A special haul road was constructed so that the convoy of dump trucks wouldn’t clog public roads during the demolition of K-25 and other big buildings at the former uranium-enrichment plant, which was built during World War II.



Bechtel Jacobs and DOE reached agreement last year on a new contract, which would extend the work through the end of calendar 2011. By that time, Bechtel Jacobs was supposed to complete the K-25 demolition and have much of the pre-demolition work done at the nearby K-27 facility.



Because of added sampling requirements, it’s not clear if K-25 can be accomplished by that deadline, and DOE isn’t addressing that issue or saying what it plans to do.



“A revised cost estimate for the K-25 Building has been submitted by Bechtel Jacobs and is under review by DOE,” agency spokesman John Shewairy said in response to questions. “We are reviewing the options presented by the contractor to safely accomplish the remaining demolition work. As this review is not yet complete, it is premature to speculate on what the final cost may entail for this project or any others within the Bechtel Jacobs scope of work.”



The last publicly available cost estimate for the K-25 project was $810 million. But that estimate, given in May 2008, included some work on K-27.



Nemec said the future priority will be to segregate and remove K-25 equipment that’s contaminated with Tc-99, making sure not to disperse the radioactivity.



“We’ve got to be very careful that we don’t spread the Tc-99 contamination and contaminate the structure itself, because then the structure would have to be (disposed of as highly radioactive waste) and that would be very costly,” he said.



Senior writer Frank Munger may be reached at 865-342-6329. His e-mail address is mungerf@knoxnews.com. His blog, “Atomic City Underground,” is available online at http://blogs. knoxnews.com/munger/