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Roy Lynn Oakley, 67, a resident of Harriman, Tenn., pleaded guilty on Thursday in U.S. District Court in Knoxville, to count one of an indictment charging him with unlawful disclosure of Restricted Data under the Atomic Energy Act. The guilty plea was announced by Matthew G. Olsen, Acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security, and James R. Dedrick, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee. Oakley had been scheduled to start trial, but appeared instead before U.S. District Court Judge Thomas A. Varlan, to enter his plea of guilty. Oakley had formerly been employed as a laborer and escort by Bechtel Jacobs at the East Tennessee Technology Park (ETTP) in Oak Ridge, Tenn. The ETTP, formerly known as Y-25, had previously been operated by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) as a facility to produce highly enriched uranium.

State Sen. Randy McNally, a Republican from Oak Ridge, was among seven Tennessee senators who signed a letter asking Energy Secretary Steven Chu to intervene on behalf of USEC in granting a loan guarantee for the American Centrifuge Project. McNally is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. Others who signed the letter were Speaker Pro Tempore Jamie Woodson, R-Knoxville, and state Sens. Steve Southerland, R-Morristown; Jim Tracy, R-Shelbyville; Mike Faulk, R- Church Hill; Tim Burchett, R-Knoxville; and Ken Yager, R-Harriman. In a statement, McNally said, "The American Centrifuge Project is one of those key opportunities where we can promote innovative American technologie, while creating good-paying Tennessee jobs and reducing our dependence on foreign sources of energy."

A number of peace groups are expected to join members of the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance for Thursday's ceremony on the anniversary of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. A Names and Remembrance Ceremony is scheduled for 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. at the entrance to the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant which produced the enriched uranium that was used in the Little Boy bomb. Among the groups planning to participate are Footprints for Peace, Michigan Stop the Bombs Campaign, Episcopal Peace Fellowship and Buddhists from the Nipponzan Myohoji.

The Department of Energy has denied USEC Inc.'s application for a $2 billion loan guarantee, and the company has started "demobilizing" the American Centrifuge Project, which currently employs about 450 at its Oak Ridge manufacturing site. "There will be layoffs," USEC spokeswoman Elizabeth Stuckle said this morning. However, the number and the timing of those layoffs has not been determined, she said..

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:

One has to asssume it's not a good thing when there's notable degradation in a big concrete slab that's part of a floor/ceiling in a building where nuclear warhead parts are assembled, disassembled and inspected. Or, as they say on the street: You got that right, Daddy Rabbit! Anyway, that's the situation at Building 9204-2E (Beta-2E) at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge. A May 15 memo by staff of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board discussed the inspection plan for a concrete slab that "has been been subject to damage in prior years from leakage of liquid chloride liquid used in dehumidification equipment." According to Y-12 spokeswoman Ellen Boatner, the concrete slab is 84 feet wide, 210 feet long and 10 inches thick and forms part of the reinforced concrete floor of the third floor and ceiling of the second floor of Beta-2E. Even though actions were taken earlier to reduce leakage and repair the damage, spalling of concrete was observed on the underside of the slab in early 2008, the DNFSB staff wrote. Since then, following some core sampling, some spalling was identified on the top surface of the concete slab, the staff noted.

The Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance will hold a public reading this Sunday (July 12) on the lawn of the UT College of Law, marking the 13th anniversary of the World Court's opinion on "Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons." According to info distributed by OREPA, fourteen community leaders -- including members of local churches -- will participate in a public reading of the court ruling. It's expected to take about three hours. The event is scheduled to start at about 1 p.m. Ralph Hutchison, coordinator of the peace alliance, said in a statement:

According to the latest info from the National Nuclear Security Administration's office in Oak Ridge, the initial loading of highly enriched uranium into Y-12's new high-security storage facility is planned for March 2010. Federal spokesman Steven Wyatt said that work would begin "following authorization to startup." But there's a lot of work that remains to be done before the new Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility is ready -- even though construction of the $549 million fortress was essentially completed in September 2008.

The government on Tuesday ordered 12 tons of bomb-grade uranium converted into commercial reactor fuel as backup in case another source of fuel from weapon ingredients is delayed. The highly enriched uranium, already declared surplus for the nation's nuclear arsenal, will come from the vast storage vaults at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge. The material will be converted or "down-blended" at the Nuclear Fuel Services plant in Erwin, Tenn., into about 220 tons of low-enriched uranium suitable for commercial reactors. The work will begin this year and be completed in 2012. The uranium will be shipped to Westinghouse Electric Co.'s Columbia Fuel Fabrication Facility in South Carolina and held in reserve for utilities contracting for reactor fuel from a plutonium mixed-oxide processing plant being built at the Savannah River Site. The $4.8 billion mixed-oxide facility at Savannah River is scheduled to open in 2016. The program is on time to this point, officials said.

That's the cover headline on the lastest issue of the ORNL Review, which identifies those challenges as: Carbon Reduction; Conservation; Bioenergy; Electric Vehicles, Nuclear; Battery Storage; Interactive Grid; Sequestration; Fusion; and Non-Proliferation. "As the nation's largest energy research facility, Oak Ridge National Laboratory is playing a leading role in addressing of energy's '10 Big Problems.' Our strategy is grounded in the belief that no single technology and no single energy source can alone provide the volume of energy capable of sustaining both the quality of our lives and the viability of our planet," ORNL's Billy Stair said in the R&D magazine's intro. It's an interesting read.

After last week's Federal Court ruling that a regional compact didn't have the authority to deny waste shipments to the EnergySolutions landfill in Utah, the decision on whether to allow EnergySolutions to import up to 20,000 tons of radioactive waste from Italy is back in the hands of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The Italian waste would be brought intitially to the EnergySolutions facility in Oak Ridge for incineration and other treatments, with the remaining residues sent to Utah for disposal. That's the plan. NRC spokesman David McIntyre said today the NRC has not taken any action regarding EnergySolutions' application for an import license. He noted that that the commission earlier "set the matter aside" because of the pending activity in Federal Court. Now, unless there is an appeal of the court ruling, McIntyre confirmed that the next move would involve the NRC. But, he said, it's not necessarily clear what step that would be. The import application, which contains the EnergySolutions proposal to import waste from Italy, has generated much controversy and more public comment than any similar application ever.

Mack Davis, 64, a retired Oak Ridge National Laboratory worker, said he spent 11 years of his 40-year career working in the lab laundry washing the hot clothes of rad workers. He thinks that exposure was the chief culprit for his cancers. "That laundry was hot, hot, hot," Davis said today by telephone. "I was exposed to all of that stuff on the clothes," Davis said. "That place was really hot." He said he ultimately developed four types of cancer, but was unable to collect under Part B of the compensation program. The findings he received indicated there was only a 42.5 percent chance that the rad exposures caused his cancer.

A group of U.S. engineers and technicians sat down one day in 2001 to figure out where the nation's future nuclear power plant fuel was going to come from. Their decision was to leap backward 30 years and re-engineer an idea perfected during the Cold War and then abandoned here in 1985. The technology -- an ultra-high-speed, 40-foot-high centrifuge that can produce enriched uranium -- was hunted down in government archives. At first, it was an adventure in industrial archaeology. "All the drawings and the specs were in a vault at [the National Laboratory] at Oak Ridge [Tenn.]," explained Daniel W. Rogers, who became general manager of the resurrected program. "We spent a year looking at them."

Janine Anderson, a sick nuclear worker and an advocate for thousands of others, died this morning after a long struggle with debilitating illnesses linked to her work in Oak Ridge. Richard Anderson, her husband of seven years, said she died in her sleep at their home in Maryville. Doctors said it was probably due to a heart attack or stroke, he said. Anderson, 56, was major player in the national effort to get legislation passed to provide a compensation fund for workers made sick by exposures in the Cold War workplace at nuclear facilities around the country.

In a blow to Rep. Bart Gordon's attempt to keep foreign radioactive waste from being imported to this country and moved across Tennessee, Nuclear Regulatory Commission said that it doesn't have the authority to keep such waste out of the United States. Advertisement The NRC wrote in an April 9 letter to Reps. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, and Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., that the Atomic Energy Act doesn't distinguish between domestic and foreign waste. The NRC says that as long as the material can be imported safely and someone is willing to accept it, the commission can't keep the waste out. Matheson and Gordon are worried about Salt Lake City-based EnergySolutions' application to import up to 20,000 tons of low-level radioactive waste from Italy's shuttered nuclear power program. After processing in Oak Ridge, about 1,600 tons would be disposed of in the western Utah desert.

Y-12 may become a key battleground as the future of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex is debated in coming months and beyond. In particular, the government's decision on whether to proceed with the Uranium Processing Facility - a new production center at Oak Ridge - is likely to be a negotiable item as the Obama administration's view of the world and strategy for nuclear defense begin to play out. There doesn't seem to be any question that the nation's weapons stockpile will continue to be drawn down. How quickly and to what extent are still up for grabs.

DOE was supposed to submit a detailed plan for removal and diposition of the transuranic waste remaining in notorious Trench 13 at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The plan was due by March 31. Instead, DOE has asked the Tennessee Dept. of Environment and Conservation for an extension. John Owsley of TDEC said the state is preparing a response. Trench 13 is located in the north part of Solid Waste Storage Area No. 5. For those who don't remember, the trench contains some transuranic waste -- including about 12 grams of plutonium -- in 50 to 70 Mason jars. Workers were attempting to excavate the site a few years back when flames shot up out of the ground, bringing a halt to work. The site was later stabilzed, but it's been on hold ever since.

"The budget request for Oak Ridge National laboratory is about $1.65 billion, based on what I'm told by lab officials and seeing in budget info released by the administration. The actual budget request for ORNL is about $1.18 billion, but once you add the work for other agencies, such as NOAA and DOD, etc., the total budget is expected to be about $1.65 billion. Energy and nonproliferation are key areas. I'm still working to get information on Y-12. I'm told there is a full allotment in place for the Uranium Processing Facility, perhaps in the range of $130 million, but I haven't found any documents that say that -- at least not yet. NNSA chief Tom D'Agostino is supposed to have a media briefing at 4 p.m."

"Los Alamos National Laboratory is nearly doubling its number of weekly shipments to the federal government's underground nuclear waste dump in southeastern New Mexico. Lab officials say the campaign announced Thursday will eliminate a backlog of about 1,500 drums of transuranic waste that are awaiting shipment to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad. A crew from Tennessee's Oak Ridge National Laboratory will move temporarily to Los Alamos to double the lab's loading capacity. The loading facility also will move to a 7-day operation. Los Alamos lab usually completes four shipments per week to WIPP. That will increase to seven during the campaign. The transuranic waste consists of tools, rags, protective clothing, sludge, soil and other materials contaminated with radioactive elements."

"An employee at the EnergySolutions' Bear Creek Facility in Oak Ridge was airlifted to a Knoxville hospital today after he was injured in an accident. Operations at the radioactive-waste processing plant were shut down immediately afterwards, and the accident is under investigation, the company said. According to information released by EnergySolutions, the worker was injured when a crane moving a 10-ton metal block failed, with the block falling and hitting the worker's leg. The worker's name was not immediately released, but EnergySolutions spokesman Mark Walker said the worker -- a 20-year employee at the site -- was in stable condition at the University of Tennessee Medical Center. Walker said the injuries were not life-threatening."