An advisory board for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee participated in a return to an in-person orientation and tour of clean up of the site, the first since the COVID-19 pandemic.
New members of the Oak Ridge Site Specific Advisory Board, which advises the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management, toured the 32,000-acre site April 6, according to an April 11 news release.
“We’re thrilled to be able to hold the new member orientation tour again,” Melyssa Noe, the advisory board’s deputy designated federal officer, said in the release. “Many of our members have little or no prior knowledge of EM’s work on the Oak Ridge Reservation when they first join the board, and this gives them an opportunity to see that work firsthand and see how it relates to the site as a whole.”
The tour started at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, including the recently demolished bulk shielding reactor, the low intensity test reactor, the Oak Ridge Research Reactor, the release reported. Other sites included Building 3019, the world's oldest operating nuclear facility as well as Building 2026 and the experimental gas cooled reactor.
The tour included the graphite reactor, according to the release. The facility was built in 1943 as a space to test the feasibility of plutonium production for atomic weapons on a larger scale. The site is part of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park, featuring educational displays. The tour ended at the East Tennessee Technology Park.
The tour gave new board member Mary Butler a new appreciation of the challenging work at Oak Ridge, the release said.
“It’s just mind-boggling how much work has been done already, and how much needs to be done,” Butler said in the release.
New member Atilio Anzellotti said in the release that the tour was “very educational.”
“Living here in Oak Ridge, you hear about those sites, but it’s a mystery,” Anzellotti said in the release. “It’s a secret like that, but now you can point there and actually see all the story and the background.”
