When Harald Larsen (59) entered the control room of the Halden reactor for the first time, smoke was thick across the room. 40 years later, the smoke has disappeared, but Harald is still on duty.
The year is 2018, the Halden reactor is shut down for good. But even if the reactor is shut down, the control room is supposed to be staffed. The reactor is under the same safety regime as if the reactor were operating, as it is called.
This means that Harald and the others with a place of work in the control room come to work, now as when the reactor was operating, to monitor, test and watch over the reactor. But what exactly are you looking out for?
We will make sure that nothing wrong happens in the reactor. That is, safe operation according to the terms of the concession. That we don't have leaks, for example. There is still fuel left in the reactor until it is emptied when new storage facilities are built, he said.
Perhaps Halden's biggest celebrity, the Halden reactor, was put into operation more than 65 years ago. The reactor has been owned and operated by the Department of Energy Engineering, and it has been used for research through the world-renowned Halden Project.
Some of the research that has been carried out here has been world-leading in areas such as control room security. Not just control room safety for the nuclear industry, but in many other industries as well.
Knowledge gained from the operation of the reactor has also benefited the petroleum sector. This has spared the sector from costly investments and that in turn has generated huge revenues for the country. This is how we got the Oil Fund, or the National Pension Fund abroad as it is officially called. And that ultimately means welfare to you and me.
HEREDITARY
There was in many ways a natural link between the Halden reactor and Harald Larsen.
“My father worked here from 1956,” he said.
“He was involved in building the reactor,” he continues.
“I984 was the first time I was inside the control room,” Larsen explains. At that time he worked as a weekend guard at the front desk.
“There were a lot of old people working here at the time,” he smiles.
“Everyone smoked,” he continues.
The smoking law came, smoking ended and the peaceful years after the fall of the wall have become less peaceful. War in the East and a world situationwhich has changed dramatically have created the need for stricter measures to safeguard external security.
But on the inside, Larsen is still sitting, as he has done since getting temporary employment in 1990, and later stuck in 1994.
“I was a substitute in the control room in the first time,” he says. He received his training on the spot.
Was he nervous about doing something wrong when running experiments?
“The worst thing to happen was that we had to shut down the reactor,” explains the seasoned man.
Those who work in the control room are, in many ways, one team: Most people cheer for the English soccer team Liverpool. You shall never walk alone, as they sing at Anfield. It's only the youngest man who doesn't cheer for the British football team. He's rooting for one of his arch-enemies, Manchester United.
“It's not really that important to me, but all my friends were cheering for Manchester United so it was like that,” says Jesper Pettersson (26).
Pettersson is a trained geographer and has previously worked in aerial photography. Tired of all the travel that work entailed, he had seen plenty of Scandinavia and northern Europe from the air. He was therefore looking for a job in his hometown of Halden. Now he has his feet firmly planted in the floor of the control room and a few months on his neck in the new job. He has never worked here while the reactor was operational in the research. Now the reactor needs to be demolished. Control room jobbener in games. Isn't he worried about the future?
“I have not felt anything about the reactor being demolished,” he says.
“There are a lot of jobs being closed down,” he adds.
-No job anywhere is secure, he continues.
Still, he views the work at the Halden reactor as a long-term job. It will be decades before the reactor is fully decommissioned and the acreage is freed up.
“Once the fuel stored here is removed, we are destined for a different role,” he says.
-The control room will in many ways become the center of the actual decommissioning of the plant, he explains controlled.
