Jan 28 Last nuclear facility to be decommissioned

The waste treatment plant is the sixth and last of Risø's original nuclear plant to be decommissioned. Funds have now been allocated to start work.

D On 19 December 2019, the Danish Parliament's Finance Committee joined Act 59 to decommission the waste treatment plant and associated storages. This will release a further part of the billion (in 2003 kroner) DD The creation of the nuclear installations was reserved for the decommissioning of the six nuclear installations.

The waste treatment plant is the country's only radioactive waste receiving station. It has a number of facilities for receiving, minimizing and sorting, characterising, packing and storing the waste. Since some of the facilities will remain in operation as long as waste comes from decommissioning of the plants, preparations for this last project have been underway for a long time.

In May 2019, the nuclear regulatory authorities approved the overall project description for the Decommissioning. Prior to this, a thorough cleanup of the waste treatment plant had been initiated, and the permanent workplaces for a number of employees were relocated to other buildings. Subsequently, the relocation of facilities intended to remain operational commenced. These facilities include a soft water and distillation plant, a laundry, and a chemical and isotope laboratory. These facilities are being transferred to two existing buildings near DD's main building.

As part of the project, the current waste storages will also have to be decommissioned. However, the fact that a decision on a permanent solution for radioactive waste has not yet been taken has meant that the emptying of stocks prior to purification will be both more expensive and more difficult than originally thought.

The waste cannot be transferred directly to a final repository, but instead must be moved to the upgraded intermediate storage facility we are building. This is expected to happen from the beginning of 2023. Decommissioning is already hampered by insufficient storage capacity, so by 2020 one of the current  storage facilities will be expanded as a temporary solution.

The interim storage also necessitates additional shielding for the packaged waste. Various steel inserts will be custom-fabricated, designed to be cast into concrete within existing steel container types. This measure will reduce radiation levels on the exterior of the containers to a point that facilitates work in proximity to the waste.

The total costs for the decommissioning of the Treatment Facility and storage facilities, including the packaging of waste for interim storage, are estimated to amount to DKK 141 million (with an uncertainty of +/- 25 percent).
Read the approved document