The incident involved a nuclear processing facility at the Y-12 site in Tennessee
\nA fire broke out at a major US uranium processing facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee on Wednesday. All employees have been accounted for and there is no danger to the general public, the Department of Energy officials insisted.
\nThe \u201cincident\u201d happened at Building 9212 of the Y-12 National Security Complex, according to the WVLT-TV in nearby Knoxville. Emergency crews responded to \u201ca fire involving uranium,\u201d the outlet reported. About 200 employees who work in the building were evacuated, as emergency crews reacted to handle the blaze.
\n\u201cI think if you live nearby you\u2019d be very concerned,\u201d a spokesperson for Y-12 told WVLT. \u201cThe situation is under control and is contained.\u201d
\nThe facility\u2019s official Twitter account spoke of \u201can incident\u201d that happened around 9:15 on Wednesday morning. It was later described as \u201ca fire in a hood\u201d that was \u201ccontained to the production building.\u201d There were \u201cno reports of injury or contamination,\u201d and there was \u201cno off-site impact to the public as a result of the incident,\u201d Y-12 said.
\nBy 1pm local time the complex had returned to normal operations, but Building 9212 remained off-limits and there was no confirmation that the fire had been put out.
\nThe National Nuclear Security Administration and the contractor Consolidated Nuclear Security, LLC are in charge of the response, Y-12 officials told the local outlet.
\nThe US Department of Energy lists the building as a uranium processing facility. Built in 1945 for the original nuclear weapons program, it serves \u201cas one of the primary chemical processing and enriched uranium production facilities at Y-12,\u201d but was scheduled to be decommissioned by the end of 2025. The fire involved \u201ca compound of uranium \u2026 in a metal form,\u201d according to WVLT.
\nThe Y-12 website describes the National Security Complex as \u201ca premier manufacturing facility dedicated to making our nation and the world a safer place,\u201d that deals with storing nuclear materials, producing fuel for the US Navy\u2019s reactors, and performs \u201ccomplementary work for other government and private-sector entities.\u201d
\nOak Ridge was built by the US government in 1942, as part of the \u201cManhattan Project\u201d to build the world\u2019s first atomic bomb. The planned community of some 75,000 residents was initially shrouded in secrecy and run by the federal government, but incorporated as a city in 1959.
\nRt<\/p>\n
Tags\uff1aUranium mines, nuclear processing facilities<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The incident involved a nuclear processing facility at the Y-12 site in Tennessee A fire broke out at a major US uranium processing facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee on Wednesday. All employees have been accounted for and there is no danger to the general public, the Department of Energy officials insisted. The \u201cincident\u201d happened at Building 9212 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":6294,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1154],"tags":[2572,2571],"class_list":["post-6293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-site","tag-uranium"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6293"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6295,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6293\/revisions\/6295"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}