OAK RIDGE, Tenn. — A former uranium enrichment building at Y-12 will soon be torn down after a release said crews began the second demolition phase at the Alpha-2 site.
It said the building is the largest facility to come down at Y-12 so far. It was built while work was ongoing on the Manhattan Project, which stretched throughout the mid-1940s and resulted in the United States' first atomic weapons. The release said the building was used for uranium enrichment, although workers did not know they were working to build the first atomic weapons until after 1945.
The building is around 2.5 acres large and is three stories tall, measuring around 325,000 square feet. Morgan Carden, a project manager at the Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management, said in the release that work to tear down the facility began in 2020.
“It was a big task to this point, and now we have another large task ahead of us to bring this building down," Carden said in the release.
In August 2023, crews deactivated major parts of the building. Since the Alpha-2 building is co-located with other facilities at Y-12, utilities had to be rerouted before demolition could begin. UCOR, the environmental management office's contractor, worked with Consolidated Nuclear Security to make sure the building was safe to be demolished.
The first phase of demolition also involved tearing down nearby ancillary facilities. Chad York, a project manager with UCOR, said in the release that crews also filled the building's basement with around 30,000 cubic yards of "low-strength material" to make sure heavy equipment could safely tear down the structure.
The Alpha-2 demolition project is expected to be completed in 2027. Crews are also tearing down a few other facilities at Y-12. In January, crews took steps towards tearing down the Beta-1 facility, another Manhattan Project-era facility.
Several other old buildings are slated to come down. The release said the facilities do not support Y-12's missions anymore. It also said because they may have been contaminated by radioactive materials, they need to be safely demolished to avoid risks to surrounding areas.