URS/CH2M Oak Ridge expects in December to declare deactivated the K-27 gaseous diffusion plant at what is now the East Tennessee Technology Park, UCOR President Ken Rueter said on Tuesday. Demolition would then begin the following month. “We are presently on track to putting yellow iron to K-27 in the first or second week of January, so we will begin demolition at that time,” Reuter, who heads the Department of Energy’s cleanup manager at Oak Ridge, said at the Decisionmakers’ Forum on Amelia Island, Fla. “We pretty much have completed all the deactivation activities. We’re now going through the formal validation that the building is criticality incredible, that’s the nuclear safety piece, and finishing the final pre-demolition activities of taking out the final asbestos panels … off the building.” UCOR has over a month and half removed more than 3,000 of the 5,000 transite panels from K-27, Rueter said. K-27, built in the 1940s, is the final of five gaseous diffusion facilities slated for demolition at the one-time uranium enrichment site. Under its “Vision 2016” plan, UCOR intends to have demolished all the gaseous diffusion plants by next year, “significantly ahead of schedule with a significant savings that can be reinvested” toward the ultimate goal of finishing full remediation of ETTP for use as a private-sector industrial park by 2020, Rueter said.
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