US Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management completes clean-up of ORNL reactor

The US Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management (EM) completed the clean-up of the ORNL site, with the shipping of the reactor vessel to a low-level radioactive waste facility in Clive, Utah, after the reactor building was taken down and disposed of rubble and debris last year. ORNL was established in 1943 to conduct pilot-scale production and separation of plutonium for the World War II Manhattan Project, while also being involved in reactor design and isotope research and production. Its Low Intensity Test Reactor was built in 1949 as a criticality testing facility that used highly enriched fuel with water as a coolant, and during its operational years it was used for training as well for experiments to establish the feasibility of water-cooled reactor, with the reactor core often reconfigured to perform these experiments. As UCOR Project Manager Greg McGinnis stated, the clean-up of this site is a big accomplishment that presented unique technical and safety issues.