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Tuesday was a good day for a landmark demolition to begin. The misting rain helped keep down the dust from the crunching of beams and bricks, and the day's general dreariness seemed to underscore the fact that a piece of history was disappearing - a sad inevitability for many. The milelong K-25 building, a brawny symbol of the nuclear age when it was constructed 65 years ago, never looked worse for wear. With its siding already stripped away, exposing the base structure, K-25 appeared ready to come down, and shortly after 4 p.m. workers got started on a task that will take a couple of years and hundreds of millions of dollars to complete.

The vantage point of the above photograph was roughly the same for Tuesday's ceremony in which workers started knocking down the southwest corner of K-25's west wing. According to info from the Dept. of Energy, the demolition of the half-mile-long west wing should be completed in 2010, with the demolition of the entire U-shaped, mile-long K-25 building accomplished by the end of 2011. Production operations in the K-25 building, where highly enriched uranium was achieved, shut down in the early 1960s. Lower enrichment activities continued at the Oak Ridge gaseous diffusion plant plant until 1985, when the facilities were placed on cold standby and then permanently shut down.

After a couple of months of demolition work at the World War II-era K-25 building, federal contractors are ready to dispose of the tons of contaminated rubble that's starting to pile up at the Oak Ridge site. The first shipments to the nuclear landfill are supposed to take place today, according to Dennis Hill of Bechtel Jacobs Co. -- the Dept. of Energy's cleanup manager. "They'll start out with five trucks doing three roundtrips a day," Hill said. That means 15 truckloads of waste will be shipped each day to the landfill seven miles away from K-25 on the DOE Oak Ridge reservation. The landfill,which has multiple liners to protect the environment, is a CERCLA disposal facility known officially as the Environmental Management Waste Management Facility. After things get started and operations get smoothed out, the number of daily waste shipments will pick up significantly. The trucks will follow a route on a specially built "haul road," which keeps the traffic of radioactive waste off public highways. Eventually, about 400,000 cubic yards of waste will be generated by demolition of K-25, which was the nation's first gaseous diffusion plant and at the time of its construction in the early 1940s was the world's largest building under one roof.

Department of Energy Manager Gerald Boyd said it's "sort of doubtful" that Bechtel Jacobs Co., DOE's cleanup manager in Oak Ridge, will complete the demolition of K-25 by the end 2011 - when the company's contract is due to expire - and federal officials are starting to make other plans. Last year, DOE extended and modified the BJC contract, valued at $1.48 billion, to allow the contractor to finish work on the mile-long and massively contaminated building that once processed uranium for the nation's Cold War arsenal of nuclear weapons.

Department of Energy Manager Gerald Boyd said it's "sort of doubtful" that Bechtel Jacobs Co., DOE's cleanup manager in Oak Ridge, will complete the demolition of K-25 by the end 2011 - when the company's contract is due to expire - and federal officials are starting to make other plans. Last year, DOE extended and modified the BJC contract, valued at $1.48 billion, to allow the contractor to finish work on the mile-long and massively contaminated building that once processed uranium for the nation's Cold War arsenal of nuclear weapons.

Reports are circulating that the cost of completing the K-25 demolition is going up big-time, as in hundreds of millions of dollars. DOE isn't saying much, except to say that's under evaluation by the agency and Bechtel Jacobs, the Oak Ridge cleanup manager. I have heard a specific dollar amount, but won't repeat here because nobody is confirming it. Earlier, of course, I reported on the technetium-99 issue that's getting big attention. Here's what DOE spokesman John Shewairy said in response to questions about the rising cost of K-25 D&D. I'm not exactly sure what it means, but you can read it for yourself:

David Walker, the president of Bechtel National, was in town this week (reportedly for a board of managers meeting at Y-12) and was in attendance at Tuesday's ceremony marking the start of demolition at K-25 (that's being conducted by Bechtel Jacobs). Bechtel, of course, is a huge contracting force in the DOE/NNSA complex, but I don't see Walker often in Oak Ridge. So I took the opportunity to approach him at the K-25 event for a couple of questions.

The Dept. of Energy has named Russell Vranicar to oversee the cleanup operations at the former K-25 uranium-enrichment plant (now known as the East Tennessee Technology Park). As federal project director, Vranicar will oversee the management "of all clean-up, decontamination and decommissioning operations at the ETTP site, which encompasses more than 500 buildings and 2,200 acres," DOE said in its announcement.

It looks like K-25, one of the jewels of the World War II Manhattan Project, will be demolished - in its entirety. A Department of Energy official said today federal officials have concluded that saving the building's North Tower, as proposed by preservationists, would be "next to impossible" and would "cost many millions of dollars more than we anticipated."

OAK RIDGE - Thousands of truckloads of hazardous garbage have already been hauled from the site, and the heavy-duty demolition work hasn't even started. Workers will begin taking down the walls of K-25 in October, but preparations - such as removing asbestos, mercury and PCBs - have been under way for a long time.

"Enormous quantities of radioactive waste and other hazardous materials are being transported from cleanup sites on the Dept. of Energy's Oak Ridge reservation. Much of the waste is moved to disposal sites elsewhere on the federal reservation, and the good news is that most of it never traverses public roads. More than $20 million was spent a few years ago to construct a special haul road to allow daily truck convoys to move waste from demolition projects at K-25 to the DOE CERCLA landfill several miles away. It's expected to take about 40,000 truckloads to move the K-25 contaminated debris to the landfill."

A public health assessment by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry concluded there were "no public health hazards" from airborne releases at the Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant (also known as the K-25 Site) and the early-era S-50 facility at the Oak Ridge site. The full report is available online and at local libraries. The agency is receiving public comment through Feb. 20. In a release distributed to the news media, the ATSDR said: "The study looked at the atmospheric releases of radioactive and nonradioactive hazardous substances from the K-25/ S-50 facilities between 1944 and 1995 when the facility closed. After evaluating potential chronic and acute exposure to ionizing radiation and uranium releases, ATSDR found those doses were not expected to cause adverse health effects for people living near the ORGDP. The ORGDP is currently known as the East Tennessee Technology Park (ETTP).

"Years after the Manhattan Project, the Department of Energy learned that workers exposed to nickel powder at various sites, including those at Oakridge, Pudacha, and Portsmouth Gaseous diffusion Plants, were at high risk. In fact, the data strongly suggested that women and African Americans were most susceptible. What did the DOE do? According to a paper, NUCLEAR POWDER/ NUCLEAR WEAPONS: The Untold Story, the agency in 1976 created a "political" study that falsified the true mortality for workers exposed to nickel power in the workplace. Urine testing had revealed purposefully negligent air monitoring. The nickel levels found in the urine of the K-25 workers were ten to hundreds of times higher than any other nickel workers in this country and around the world. In short, as the global warming emails have accused scientists, two-third (the women and African Americans) were excluded due to the government's need to have an outcome that would show workers unharmed by nickel dust. Waste handling operations at K-25 (Oak Ridge) nuclear waste operations --- and other locations --- reported hazy, smoky and foggy nickel dust conditions. "

DOE Manager Gerald Boyd, speaking at this week's conference hosted by the Energy, Technology and Environmental Business Association, reminded folks that the cost of the big K-25 project has increased four-fold since 2002. It went from a $200 million project to one approaching $1 billion, Boyd said, although he suggests the initial estimate may not have been very accurate. A lot of the cost increase, according to DOE's Oak Ridge chief, came after "we almost killed someone," referring to the accident in which a worker fell through a second-story floor. That accident underscored the deteriorated state of the building, and required a whole different approach to cleanup. There have been other cost issues, as well, and taking down such a massive structure, highly deteriorated and heavily contaminated, continues to present surprising new challenges.

Unlike most fish stories, this isn't about the one that got away. No fish were getting away Thursday. Department of Energy contractors began a project that will eliminate the entire fish population - tens of thousands of fish - in three ponds near the former K-25 uranium-enrichment plant. It's part of an overall plan to restore and "ecologically enhance" the ponds that were historically contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls and other pollutants.

The Department of Energy has confirmed plans to rebid the Oak Ridge cleanup contract currently held by Bechtel Jacobs Co. Bechtel Jacobs has been DOE's cleanup manager since 1998 and the current pact, originally scheduled to conclude this year, was extended through 2011 to make progress on the much-delayed dismantlement project at the K-25 and K-27 uranium-enrichment facilities.

"The Dept. of Energy announced late today that it had issued a series of safety and security violations against Bechtel Jacobs Co., DOE's cleanup manager in Oak Ridge since 1998. The security violations pertain to a 2007 incident in which Roy Lynn Oakley was arrested and later convicted of stealing and attempting to sell classified equipment from the uranium-enrichment operation at K-25. BJC was fined $562,500 for the security violations associated with those events. Even though DOE said it was unlikely any sensitive information or materials ended up in foreign hands, the agency said it was levying the fine "to help prevent future breaches of security.""

According to the latest statistics on the Dept. of Labor's Website for the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program, claimants from Tennessee have received a total of $911,110,674 in compensation and medical bills paid. That's largely due, of course, to worker claims related to the government's Oak Ridge nuclear facilities (particularly K-25, Y-12, and ORNL). The total is far and away the most of any state, although it's certainly not a stat to be proud of. It means a lot of people got sick working in Oak Ridge.

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - The U.S. Department of Energy has revived a plan to salvage millions of dollars from radioactive scrap culled from old uranium enrichment operations in Tennessee and Kentucky. The government has 15,300 tons of low-level contaminated nickel left from cleanup of the former K-25 plant in Oak Ridge, near Knoxville, and a still-active sister plant in Paducah, Ky. That's enough to fill 765 tractor-trailers or, if melted down, enough to cover an NFL football field 15 inches deep.

EnergySolutions is purchasing a short-line railroad that traverses the former K-25 uranium-enrichment site (now Heritage Center) and joins the main Norfolk Southern rail system at Blair Station a few miles north of the site. The company and Heritage Railroad Corp., a subsidiary of the non-profit Community Reuse Organization of East Tennessee, confirmed the execution of an asset purchase agreement. Terms of the sale were not released. Lawrence Young, the president of CROET, said the sale should be closed within 90 days following a number of actions, including a review by the Tennessee Attorney General's Office (which looks at transactions from non-profit entities to for-profit companies).