URS | CH2M Oak Ridge LLC (UCOR) combines the talents of two global engineering, design, construction, project management and environmental services companies, AECOM and CH2M, and small business partner Restoration Services, Inc. (RSI). With AECOM as lead partner, UCOR manages the cleanup of 2,200-acre East Tennessee Technology Park for its client and partner, the U.S. Department of Energy, in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
The site was contaminated with radioactive, hazardous and industrial wastes generated by more than 40 years of national defense and energy missions.
The East Tennessee Technology Park, once called the Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant, was built as part of the super-secret Manhattan Project in the 1940s to enrich uranium for the atomic bombs that would end World War II. The site later produced enriched uranium for commercial and defense purposes. Operations ceased in 1985, and the site was permanently shut down in 1987.
That same year, the Oak Ridge Reservation was placed on the National Priorities List as a Superfund site, designating it to be cleaned up under the provisions of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). The Department of Energy (DOE) then began cleanup operations, which include demolition of many of the buildings at the site.
This massive, multi-decade cleanup mission is executed through close partnerships among the DOE, UCOR, community stakeholders, and the represented workforce. These partnerships work to advance environmental cleanup, enable new and enduring missions, and support the shared vision to reindustrialize the East Tennessee Technology Park, turning it into a vibrant private-sector industrial park.
