UCOR has been awarded the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s 2026 Environment and Energy Award for Environmental Excellence, recognizing the cleanup contractor’s successful deactivation and demolition of the historic Alpha-2 Building at the Y-12 National Security Complex.
Ashley Saunders, UCOR chief regulatory officer and environmental strategy lead, accepted the award on behalf of the company during the annual Tennessee Chamber Environment & Recycling Conference awards banquet in Gatlinburg.
“Receiving this recognition reflects the incredible dedication and engineering ingenuity our team brought to one of the most complex environmental remediation challenges in the state,” Saunders said. “Safely removing a landmark liability while protecting both our workforce and the surrounding ecosystem demonstrates what can be achieved through rigorous planning and strict regulatory compliance.”
The multiyear cleanup resolved one of Tennessee’s most significant environmental liabilities. Built in 1944 during the Manhattan Project, the 325,000-square-foot, three-story Alpha-2 building originally housed electromagnetic separation equipment—known as calutrons—used to enrich uranium for the world’s first atomic weapons. In later decades, the structure supported Cold War research and lithium isotope separation, leaving behind extensive legacy contamination before being placed in shutdown in the 1990s.
