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A lot of people get confused over DOE-ORO. Let me see if I can help:
In The Beginning, the forerunner of the Department of Energy swiped a buncha land here. They set up three distinct and seperate facilities, K25, Y12 and X10.
The only one remaining in its' 1940's status / footprint is Y12. That's where they make the bomb parts, crazy shiznet for the Navy, and a bunch of other stuff under the Work For Others program. They have some of the best metalworkers on the planet there, and I'm proud of them.
K25 went tits up years ago. Partially due to environmentalistas, but also because we now have more of their product on hand than we can burn up in several lifetimes. They mostly are knocking down the plant, and have put a sort of industrial park there, ETTP (East Tennessee Technology Park).
X10/the reactor/hollifield heavy ion/oak ridge associated universities/orise and several other projects basically sort of morphed into the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. They do everything, but not really the bomb stuff. Superfast computers, lots of biological and environmental research.
Then there is the SNS (Spallation Neutron Source). I know jack about it. They are starting to build demonstration reactors at the old Clinch River Breeder Reactor site, now as well.
The only "real" DOE facility is the Oak Ridge Federal Building (aka battleship). The people in there work directly for the Department of Energy. At Y12 and ORNL & friends, they are US Government property, US Government toys, and US Government money, but managed by various corporations. 9 out of 10 people working in those places from the operators to the SPO's get a check cut from a subcontractor, who gets it from the prime/master contractor, who then gets it from DOE.
If that's not confusing enough, DOE then spun off the nuc building business to a subgroup called NNSA (the National Nuclear Security Administration). So, Y12 is under NNSA, and ORNL & Friends are under both DOE and NNSA.
SO.
Y12 had their own radio system since The Beginning, the VHF-Hi band one. Y12 does not play well with others. So, you had Y12 Ops and Proforce on one radio system, the rest of Oak Ridge Operations / Oak Ridge Area Security on another system, the City of Oak Ridge on yet another, Anderson, Roane and Loudon counties on three others.
People said enough was enough, and they wanted a Wide Area Radio System. Y12 said fine, but only if we run it. The ORO said hell naw, and they fought for a long time. This resulted in a frankensystem, where you still have some Federal VHF high band radio traffic by civilian contractors, and fedgov UHF P25 trunking all at the same time.
No other outside agency maintains an active presence on WARS, although they all have a patch capability. Oak Ridge is still an island unto itself on 800 type I/II, and the surrounding counties are VHF/UHF/TVTRS (Knox County being on 800, but not really compatible with OR).
This is why you rarely hear anything on WARS besidesFire / EMS (Y12 has their own). Security is generally encrypted, operations are generally low power or by phone. Construction uses direct instead of the system, I suspect.
I haven't kept up with it, but I was guessing that via attrition the legacy VHF systems were getting increasingly quiet, but I guess not.
To my knowledge there is no tower 2 or 3. I have seen tower 4 and 1 personally. 1 is inside the fence at Y12, and 4 is behind ETTP if I recall correctly, but they may have shuffled stuff. DOE has a huge number of radios and towers around here.
So, google WARS for a little more.
Then of course, Y12 has an ultrawideband superdooper multimedia comms system seperate from even WARS (think handheld full motion video, conferencing, etc) they are trying to impress everyone with you can read much more about because they want to spin it off, license it and make money from it.
The Bull Run Train is a train you can get on at ETTP and ride around. Pretty neat stuff actually.
surfaceMount
