
Jan 31 The old pit was emptied
One of the DD 's task is to provide a better overview of the radioactive waste that was stored on Risø prior to our creation in 2003. With the emptying of the so-called Old Grube, we have made a good step forward.
U Under the central road store's screened floor are a lot larger and smaller cavities intended for radioactive waste. One of the largest cavities is Old Pit, which in the years 1966 to 1991 was filled with more than ten tons of assorted objects. Over the last six months, all these items have been lifted out, measured, sorted, processed and packed in containers. It is now all also registered in our Waste Documentation System.
The laborious work has offered some surprises along the way:
"Radioactivity levels were roughly as expected. But the processing and registration of the items has not been as thorough as we have practiced to do today," says Anna Warberg Larsen, team leader for Waste Management.
Some of the first items pulled up were wrapped in plastic, but had, despite this radioactive dust, been sitting extremely high. This made it necessary to wrap all objects in a new layer of plastic as soon as they were taken out of the pit, so as not to disperse the dust during transport and handling. It also turned out that the old lists and packing slips for the contents of the pit could not be taken at face value:
"Many items were either not marked or had a mark that did not match the packing slip," says Anna Warberg Larsen.
The extra layer of plastic and the faulty marking made it a bit of a detective task to identify and describe each item. But now the contents of the pit – with everything from filters and bits of vents to used reactor shielding plugs – have been sorted and labelled, duly documented and packed neatly in containers for intermediate storage.
Work to improve the registration and packaging of the historic waste on Risø will continue in the coming years. This is in preparation for both the dismantling of our treatment station with associated storage facilities and a long-term solution for all the waste.