A 2022 priority goal of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management was met ahead of schedule when a team at the former uranium enrichment facility in Paducah, Ky., removed 1 million pounds of an ozone-depleting chemical from the site.
The team removed dichlorotetrafluoroethane, known as R-114 refrigerant, which was used in uranium enrichment at the Paducah site before operations ended in 2014, a news release said.
“Congratulations to the Paducah team for meeting this milestone,” Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office Manager Joel Bradburne said in the release. “This is a significant advancement towards DOE’s goal to remove R-114 from the Paducah site entirely over the next few years.”
The uranium enrichment operations at the site reportedly produced a lot of heat as a result of the compressing of uranium hexaflouride gas, the release reported. The R-114 was pumped into the system as a cooling process to better control the temperatures during the conversion process.
Four Rivers Nuclear Partnership, a deactivation and remediation contractor, led in the R-114 removal project, which was supported by subcontractor Veolia, according to the release. The removal will benefit the environment by reducing greenhouse gas emissions to the equivalent of taking approximately 10,000 vehicles off the road in a year.
Four Rivers Nuclear Partnership Program Manager Myrna Redfield praised the progress made in the removal of the R-114, the release reported.
“In addition to the strong team we have put together at FRNP, we also give credit to the valuable partnership we have established with our subcontractor Veolia, who has supported this milestone as we shipped one million pounds of R-114 to their facility this calendar year,” Redfield said in the release.
