Environment

SLIDESHOW: Demolition Completed on 37 Inactive Buildings at PGDP

WKMS | By John Null

Published June 30, 2015 at 3:53 PM CDT

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Once the building was down, heavy equipment operators began “top-down” shearing to safely remove the remaining structure. Demolition debris was then downsized and loaded into rail cars for shipment off site.";s:

DOE

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An excavator with a shear attachment prepares to remove a section of floor from the upper levels of the C-420 building in the final stages of demolition.

DOE

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The C-410 building was covered in a protective fixative before demolition began.

DOE

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Debris from demolition is cleared from the slab, significantly changing the landscape of the plant.

DOE

The U.S. Department of Energy says an important milestone has been reached in the clean-up process at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, as the last of 37 inactive buildings has been safely removed.

The feed plant was built in 1956 on a five-acre plot in the center of the plant. Uranium hexafluoride was produced there for uranium enrichment during the Cold War.

“The completion of the highly complex, multi-story feed plant demolition project dramatically changed the skyline of the GDP,” said Darl Anderson, project integration and operations manager for LATA Environmental Services of Kentucky, DOE cleanup contractor at the site. “This project was a major part of LATA’s more than three million work hours without a lost workday accident.”

More than 4,700 tons of waste have been removed from the feed plant site since 2004.

Other PGDP facilities are currently undergoing deactivation in advance of further decontamination and decommissioning.