Reactor raised from university site

FAYETTEVILLE — Cleanup of a former nuclear test site in rural Washington County continued Monday with the lifting and placement of the site’s reactor core into a special containment vessel, said project manager Dean Wheeler. Work remains to be done before it can be trucked across the country to a Nevada disposal site, but the effort marks a major step in removing the radioactive heart of a site that languished unused for decades.

The Southwest Experimental Fast Oxide Reactor site, about 20 miles southwest of Fayetteville, was built in the late 1960s with funding from the Atomic Energy Commission and operated by a group of investor-owned utilities, according to the University of Arkansas, site owner.

It never was hooked up to the equipment necessary to generate electricity. The 20-megawatt reactor ceased operations in the early 1970s. UA took ownership in 1975 for research purposes, but by 1986 the site had fallen out of use. A $10.5 million U.S. Department of Energy grant announced in October 2016 jump-started cleanup work.

But, until earlier this year, money to finish the job remained uncertain for a project estimated by UA to cost $26.1 million. In April, federal lawmakers Sen. John Boozman and Rep. Steve Womack announced an additional $10 million in to complete the federal cleanup.

Wheeler oversees the project for Utah-based Energy Solutions. He said workers used a lift on Monday morning to raise the 84,000-pound reactor core, then placed it into a 20-foottall, carbon steel containment vessel shaped “like a big soup can.”

He said a total of about 25 workers, including from Barnhart Crane & Rigging and also demolition contractor Brandenburg, were on site for the lift Monday. Another dozen or so observers, including from the state Department of Health, were also on hand, Wheeler said.