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The government has paid out more than $1 billion in claims to 9,134 Tennesseans made ill from working in the nuclear weapons facilities at Oak Ridge during the Cold War. The Labor Department announced the latest tally on Tuesday, saying others may still be eligible who haven't filed claims. The Tennesseans worked at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant, the former K-25 uranium enrichment plant or the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Since the program began in 2001, about one in five payouts have gone to Tennesseans. The program provides compensation and medical benefits to workers diagnosed with cancer or other illnesses caused by workplace exposure to radiation, beryllium or silica. Another $500 million has been paid to nearly 4,800 workers at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Kentucky.

OAK RIDGE, Tenn. (WVLT) -- The Department of Energy is pulling the plug on Oak Ridge's controversial toxic waste incinerator. The DOE says it'll stop receiving waste by the end of April. Crews are scheduled to begin demolishing the facility in five years. The incinerator has burned concerns about emissions for years. "It's basically done its job," said Walter Perry, a DOE spokesman. That job's been burning more than 33 million pounds of waste since 1991. The one-of-a-kind, $26 million dollar incinerator at the former K-25 uranium enrichment plant treats what the DOE calls "mixed wastes." "You have polychlorinated biphenyls, PCBs as they're commonly called, as well as hazardous types of waste....and radioactive elements," Perry said. The DOE plans to burn through the remaining 1.7 million pounds of remaining mostly liquid waste by September 30th. "At that time, we'll begin closure activities, which basically taking the incinerator, rinsing all the piping and the tanks, and leading up to the facility demolition," Perry said. The DOE says that's set to happen in 2014.

OAK RIDGE, Tenn. (AP) - Building the world's first full-scale uranium enrichment factory - a 45-acre monster that was the biggest industrial structure in the world at the time - took 18 months amid the race for the first atomic bomb. Six decades later, federal authorities think they finally have a handle on just how long it will take to clean up and tear down the long-shuttered relic of the Manhattan Project: About 15 years.