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.