Oak Ridge Transuranic Waste Processing Center Upgrades Ventilation and Waste Drum Processing Equipment

en.Wedoany.com Reported - On November 3, the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management announced progress on equipment upgrades at the Transuranic Waste Processing Center in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The project is being carried out jointly by the Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management and cleanup contractor United Cleanup Oak Ridge (UCOR), focusing on renovating the Cask Processing Enclosure, removing outdated processing equipment and electrical control systems, and upgrading ventilation, monitoring, and waste drum shredding equipment to expand the range of radioactive waste processing generated by nuclear facility decommissioning.

The renovation is concentrated in the Cask Processing Enclosure (CPE). UCOR construction crews began dismantling the existing conveyors, soil mixers, and some ventilation facilities in early 2026, while also removing electrical control equipment that was no longer applicable. Workers reconfigured the ventilation system and added ventilation ductwork to provide supporting conditions for subsequent large waste container processing operations.

Equipment updates also include the installation of high-definition cameras, monitoring software, and a new waste drum shredder. The new equipment will replace some manual operations that previously used reciprocating saws to cut waste drums. The upgraded monitoring system is used to inspect waste processing activities within the enclosure and to support operators in conducting equipment operation monitoring.

The renovated processing area will be used to receive large waste boxes generated by deactivation and demolition projects at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Y-12 National Security Complex. The area was previously used to process waste from underground storage containers and was later repurposed to process contaminated soil from the remediation project of historically buried storage tanks at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. This round of equipment upgrades adjusts it into a new operating area suitable for processing large waste boxes.

The Transuranic Waste Processing Center has a processing building area of approximately 38,000 square feet, or about 3,530 square meters, and contains four operating areas: the contact-handled glovebox area, the waste box disassembly area, the hot cell, and the Cask Processing Enclosure. This upgrade targets the Cask Processing Enclosure among them and does not involve the overall reconstruction of the other three processing areas.