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The Department of Energy is drilling a series of wells south of the Clinch River to ensure no nuclear waste from Oak Ridge has migrated underground into its neighbors' backyards along Jones Road. "We have not found any evidence of any contamination south of the river," said David Adler with the Department of Energy. "This is completely a precautionary measure." North of the Clinch River on DOE property is where nuclear waste was buried from the 1940s until the '80s. The groundwater in this area is known to be contaminated from the hazardous materials. However, recently there were signs that the material may be moving towards the river.

The Department of Energy is drilling a series of wells south of the Clinch River to ensure no nuclear waste from Oak Ridge has migrated underground into its neighbors' backyards along Jones Road. "We have not found any evidence of any contamination south of the river," said David Adler with the Department of Energy. "This is completely a precautionary measure." North of the Clinch River on DOE property is where nuclear waste was buried from the 1940s until the '80s. The groundwater in this area is known to be contaminated from the hazardous materials. However, recently there were signs that the material may be moving towards the river.

The historic discharges at the government's Oak Ridge nuclear facilities have gotten new attention in recent weeks because of the massive release of coal ash that resulted from the pond breach at TVA's Kingston steam plant. One concern was that TVA's cleanup efforts, including the likelhood of dredging, might stir up some of the old radioactive pollution buried under sediments in the Clinch River and points downstream of Oak Ridge. DOE, as noted earlier, is planning to do some additional sampling in the Clinch to supplement the database on pollution levels from previous sampling programs -- mostly since the early 1980s.

The working group that evaluates dredging permits for the Clinch River environs has evaluated the Emory River Embayment and concluded that no Oak Ridge-related hot pockets of radioactive material exist in the underlying sediments. Therefore, the Watts Bar Interagency Working Group approved a TVA request for dredging in the Emory. The group convened a meeting Monday via conference call to deal with the matter expeditiously and set the stage for recovery efforts associated with last month's coal ash spill at the Kingston Fossil Plant.

Tomorrow's column will be about a tentative agreement to extend the deadline (now at 2016) for completing the Oak Ridge cleanup of the Dept. of Energy's Oak Ridge reservation. One of the decisions yet to be made is what to do with White Oak Lake, which historically was used as a giant settling basin for ORNL's radioactive discharges before the water was released into the Clinch River and reservoirs beyond.

Bailey Johnson has always savored the sweet taste of well water, shunning whenever possible the chemically treated city stuff. Now Johnson and his family members drink bottled water. It's delivered free of charge - courtesy of the U.S. Department of Energy - to their farm on the Clinch River, and Johnson sees the irony. "At one time we didn't want to drink anything but our groundwater," he said. "Now we want to drink anything but our groundwater."

The U.S. Enrichment Corp. and Babcock & Wilcox Technical Services today announced plans to form a joint venture known as American Centrifuge Manufacturing LLC, which will become the lead organization in production of machines for the new uranium-enrichment plant at Piketon, Ohio. According to Elizabeth Stuckle, the USEC spokeswoman at headquarters in Maryland, the partnership will be a 55/45 pecentage arrangement with USEC holding 55 percent of the newly formed company that will manage the manufacturing program that ultimately will produce 11,500 machines -- and perhaps more if there's an expanded enrichment facility. "This means all manufacturing suppliers who are manufacturing parts for the American Centrifiuge plant will report up through this joint venture," Stuckle said. B&W Technnical Services Clinch River has been a manufacturer of components for the centrifuges under a contract with USEC since 2007. Now the partnership will be managing that work as well as other manufacturing activities for the AC100 machines in West Virginia, etc..