American Recovery and Reinvestment Act workers at the Savannah River Site imploded the 455-foot-tall K Reactor Cooling Tower in May 2010. The project was completed safely and contributed 36.5 square miles to the site’s total footprint reduction.
Deactivation and Decommissioning (D&D) is the process of taking an active/excess/abandoned facility to a final disposition end state. Because of residual radioactivity, other hazardous constituents, and the physical condition of EM’s facilities, D&D presents unique hazards that must be addressed from a safety, programmatic, environmental, and technological standpoint. The general D&D process applies to all facilities across the EM complex. For additional information on the D&D process and a brief explanation of the DOE complex-wide facility D&D work please see the D&D - Project Basics Adobe PDF Document presentation under Special Features.
The Deactivation and Decommissioning (D&D) function within the Office of D&D and Facility Engineering focuses on innovative applications and timely insertion of existing commercially available technologies, processes and hardware to identify and address D&D risks and challenges. The program supports the development of informed facility D&D strategy such as In-Situ Decommissioning, enhanced verifiability of the efficacy of D&D operations, increased productivity and personnel safety of D&D operation, facilitation of acceptable facility end-state, and independent verification.