Displaying items by tag: kairos oak ridge
Nukes hit Oak Ridge airport: Plans on hold in favor of private science enterprise
Illustrated photo from a presentation on the Oak Ridge Airport project to Roane County officials at the Roane County Courthouse in Kingston on Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017 soon after the state appropriated $15 million for use toward the now-paused airport project. Roane County via Oak Ridge Today
City: Airport ‘paused’ because of nearby planned uranium-enrichment facility
OAK RIDGE — The city paused its long-simmering and controversial project to build a general aviation airport in the western part of Oak Ridge.
Oak Ridge government announced it paused the plan to build the airport in part of East Tennessee Technology Park because another nearby project is going forward: Orano USA’s Project Ike. Orano announced its plans for that project, a large uranium enrichment facility, Wednesday, Sept. 4; the city of Oak Ridge announced its pause the following week, Wednesday Sept. 11.
The city stated it wanted to “re-evaluate the proposed location” for the airport due to the Orano plan. City communications specialist Lauren Gray declined to name any other locations the city might be considering, saying plans weren’t that definite yet.
(Hellbender Press won a first-place award from the East Tennessee Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists for its previous coverage of the proposed Oak Ridge airport).
Contractors finish scraping remnants of war industry at former K-25 site in Oak Ridge
Aerial view of the East Tennessee Technology Park in August 2024 following the completion of all demolition and soil remediation projects at the former uranium enrichment complex by DOE’s Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management and contractor UCOR. Department of Energy
Final remediation could add spark to regional technology and alternative-energy industry
OAK RIDGE — Workers finished clearing more than a million tons of nuclear-contaminated soil from a long-toxic site in the Atomic City dating to the World War II and Cold War eras.
While the site was established to enriched uranium for the atomic bomb the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima toward the end of WWII, its future may lie in solar power and peaceful use of nuclear technology. The cleanup also ties into broader questions and controversies about storage of wastes from other Oak Ridge sites.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management (OREM) and its contractor United Cleanup Oak Ridge (UCOR) removed and disposed of more than 554,000 cubic yards of soil, equaling nearly 50,000 dump truck loads, according to OREM.
“Today is a significant and meaningful step toward completing our ultimate mission at the East Tennessee Technology Park,” said OREM Manager Jay Mullis. “Our progress has transformed the site from an unusable liability into an economic asset for the Oak Ridge community.”
Ed Blandford, Kairos Chief Technology Officer, chats with Oak Ridge Environmental Management’s Ben Williams after an event celebrating the cleanup of radioactive soils at Oak Ridge’s K-25 site. Ben Pounds/Hellbender Press