Oct 14 Another reactor lift completed

The nearly three-metre-wide metal ring, which sat on the top of the reactor tank in DR3, has been pulled up. Like the promise earlier this year, today's operation was conducted with high professional expertise from Dutch Mammoet and custom-made equipment from Aalborg company Bladt Industries.

Onceagainthe red and yellow cranes have played with their muscles in Denmark's biggest research reactor DR3. Earlier today, the Dutch heavy transport and lifting company Mammoet lifted the 17-tonne shielding ring that has been sitting around the top of the reactor's tank. Danish Decommissioning has thus taken an important step forward in the work to decommission Denmark's largest research reactor.

The shielding ring is technically called Top Shield Ring or TSR. The ring weighs 17 tonnes and years of reactor operation have bombarded it with neutrons, so the inside of the ring is highly radioactive. The lifting operation therefore took place behind a protective concrete wall and with remote-controlled equipment. The heavy shielding ring was placed in a shielding container, which was lifted down from the 10.5 metre high reactor block. Here it has been placed in a second shielding container and driven to the Danish Decommissioning interim facility storage facility. With shielding, the Top Shield Ring weighs almost 60 tonnes.

In May 2014, the reactor plug itself, which has been in the ring, was pulled up, and since then the reactor tank has been closed with a movable lid that can be run aside on rails. First the ring was pulled up, and then it was driven aside at the same time as the moving lid was rolled over the tank again. Mammoet's massive cranes were remotely operated by a small team, which sat well shielded at the bottom of the reactor hall

The operation was largely planned as lifted by the reactor plug. Since the now-lifted Top Shield Ring has the shape of a vanilla wreath, an additional shield was needed inside the ring. The special shielding container is also this time custom made by Bladt Industries in Aalborg.