Dec 15 A chunk of DR 3's concrete removed

Two days before shutting down the company, a milestone was reached in the decommissioning of Danish Reactor 3: the first concrete blocks have been sawn out of the top of the reactor and placed in containers.

E With the assistance of the Swedish company Extrem Borr &Sowteknik, a team of employees has painstakingly sawn cuts into the upper part of the reactor block. The first vertical cut was made at the start of the year and it turned out to generate so much dust that the work had to be paused while some transparent dust cages were constructed to put on the remote-controlled saws. It also quickly became apparent that the old drawings of the reactor block's materials and construction could not necessarily be expected – a well-known challenge in the work of dismantling Risø's nuclear facilities. In other words, both the plans and the equipment for cutting the outer parts had to be adjusted along the way.

A large number of cuts have now been cut into the outer layer of reinforced concrete, steel and the steel profiles of the reactor block. Both vertically and horizontally have been cut into the façades and finally some vertical incisions from the top to free up the first of the sawn-off blocks. The work has been marked by stops along the way; both minor stops when, for example, a new layer required a different blade, and larger stops due to this year's corona restrictions.

On Monday, December 7, the first twelve sawn-off blocks – three from each edge – could be lifted by crane into a few containers. Each block is two metres long and otherwise 40 x 40 cm, so that could just pry six blocks into one container.

The work of sawing several blocks out of the top of the reactor will continue DD 's employees must return to the workplace. At the same time, a new large dust cage must be prepared for the sawing further in the middle, where more activated dust can be expected. The entire reactor block is scheduled to be sawn up in about 600 blocks, which will fill 100 containers.