UCOR fills basement of Y-12 Beta-1 facility with concrete-like material

The Department of Energy’s cleanup contractor at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee has deactivated the above-ground floors of a contaminated building at the Y-12 National Security Complex and is filling up the basement at the facility, DOE said last week.

The DOE Office of Environmental Management contractor, United Cleanup Oak Ridge, is pouring more than 3,000 truckloads of concrete-like material into the basement of the Beta-1 Building, Environmental Management said in a release last week.

Beta-1 was built in 1944 as part of a Manhattan Project effort to enrich uranium, but nowadays it is a high-risk excess contaminated facility earmarked for demolition. First, however, DOE had to do something about standing water in the 111,000-square-foot basement.

To dry things out for deactivation, pipefitters are installing a second water treatment system to cut downtime caused by groundwater flooding, DOE said in last week’s release.

UCOR is already pouring the concrete-like “controlled low-strength material” into the basement and the job should be finished this fall, according to the release. The process stabilizes the slab for heavy equipment prior to demolition.

More than 10 million gallons of water have already been eliminated. DOE said in January 2024 it expects to tear down the facility in 2026.