Reactor Removal at LLNL
Two U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Districts and the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Environmental Management partnered with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to demolish a building and remove a reactor to make room for new facilities on the lab’s 1-square-mile footprint in Livermore, Calif. Since space is limited the lab must demo buildings that have outlived their purpose such as buildings B175 and B280, two high risk excess contaminated facilities. B280 housed the Livermore Pool Type Reactor, a neutron-producing machine used for fundamental research and to measure and calibrate instruments. Later, it was used for trace-element measurements, radiation-damage studies and researching shorter-lived fission products. San Francisco and Kansas City Districts, in an interagency agreement with EM, completed removal of the reactor from within the building. The reactor demolition work included characterizing and demolishing the reactor bioshield, reactor internals and support equipment.

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Photo by: Department of Energy |  VIRIN: 220510-F-BF997-0001.JPG