Paducah Advances Large Building Toward Deactivation

PADUCAH, Ky. – Workers at EM’s Paducah Site recently relocated personnel and operations from 129,800 square feet of space in the C-720 Maintenance and Storage Building to prepare for future deactivation of the large structure.

“The C-720 Maintenance and Storage Building was designed and operated to support the site during uranium enrichment operations,” said Jennifer Woodard, the Paducah Site lead for EM’s Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office. “Since enrichment stopped, the stores and receiving areas are able to operate out of a much smaller area. Moving into a smaller on-site structure is a much more efficient way to operate. This relocation brings us a step closer to being able to deactivate and demolish the building.”

The C-720 building covers about 300,000 square feet, which is comparable in size to three city blocks. The recent consolidation project moved the stores and receiving areas and other office space into other facilities at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant site. The configuration that previously supported enrichment-era operations had contributed significantly to utility consumption at the Paducah Site.

Decreasing the building’s occupancy and relocating the operations is a big step toward reducing utility costs, Woodard said.

Four Rivers Nuclear Partnership (FRNP), EM’s deactivation and remediation contractor at the Paducah Site, performed the recent work.

“Our team approached this work with creativity, successfully meeting the challenges of the project without impacting other projects happening at the site,” FRNP Program Manager Myrna Redfield said. “They did the work while operating safely under COVID controls.”