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1960s vacuum found in radioactive waste at nuclear plant
By Talker News Apr 30, 2025 Updated 17 hrs ago
By Charlie Fenton
A 1960s vacuum hoover is among deadly radioactive waste which is being recovered from one of the world's oldest nuclear sites.
The domestic Electrolux cleaner was used to suck up dust at the Sellafield nuclear plant in Cumbria during the 1950s and 1960s.
It was dumped and locked away along with other radioactive debris in six compartments in a special area known as the Pile Fuel Cladding silo when the plant was decommissioned in the 1970s.
The nuclear waste - which was never meant to be removed - is now being taken out of the plant which is described as one of the 'four most hazardous buildings' in western Europe.
It is being recovered from the site as part of the full decommissioning process and so far 18 special steel containers have been filled with waste from the silo.
Roddy Miller, Sellafield Ltd’s chief operating officer, said: "The vacuum cleaner is a great example of how challenging it is to clear this silo - we don’t know for sure what’s in there - they didn’t keep accurate records in those days.
"Anything taken into the building by the workforce of the day was likely to be contaminated because of the environment they were working in.
"There was no alternative disposal route for contaminated material, so everything just went into the silo."
The Pile Fuel Cladding Silo was built in the early 1950s to store cladding from nuclear fuel that had been used in the Windscale Piles, the first reactors at Sellafield.
It was constructed without any means of retrieving the waste inside, effectively making it a 'locked vault' that has stored over 3,200 cubic meters of intermediate-level waste (ILW) for more than 70 years.
After decades of work to figure out how to take waste from a building designed never to be emptied retrievals teams are slowly removing waste.
So far, enough waste to fill 18 storage boxes has been cleared.
Roddy Miller also said: "It’s a fantastic achievement to get to the point where we’re routinely retrieving waste from the building.
"The scale of the challenge was immense - this was a facility that was not designed to be emptied.
"Ironically, a modern-day vacuum cleaner is also playing a part in the waste removal job, sucking up dust created when waste is dropped into storage boxes. It will eventually be consigned as waste itself, joining its 1960s predecessor.
"Removing waste from old buildings like the Pile Fuel Cladding Silo is Sellafield’s most important job today.
Alongside it, there’s another silo and 2 ponds that need to be emptied.
The ponds store used nuclear fuel underwater and were also not designed to be emptied.
Each one of these buildings needs its own unique decommissioning plan - all of them will take decades to complete.
Roddy said: "For the first time in our history, we’re routinely retrieving waste from all 4 of our legacy ponds and silos.
"That’s an incredibly important milestone in our journey to clean up the site.
"But there’s a lot of work yet to do and these four facilities will continue to challenge for many years to come.
"Our focus now is to safely accelerate the pace of retrievals and ultimately eliminate the risk these historic buildings pose.
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1960s vacuum found in radioactive waste at nuclear plant
By Talker News Apr 30, 2025 Updated 17 hrs ago
By Charlie Fenton
A 1960s vacuum hoover is among deadly radioactive waste which is being recovered from one of the world's oldest nuclear sites.
The domestic Electrolux cleaner was used to suck up dust at the Sellafield nuclear plant in Cumbria during the 1950s and 1960s.
It was dumped and locked away along with other radioactive debris in six compartments in a special area known as the Pile Fuel Cladding silo when the plant was decommissioned in the 1970s.
The nuclear waste - which was never meant to be removed - is now being taken out of the plant which is described as one of the 'four most hazardous buildings' in western Europe.
It is being recovered from the site as part of the full decommissioning process and so far 18 special steel containers have been filled with waste from the silo.
Roddy Miller, Sellafield Ltd’s chief operating officer, said: "The vacuum cleaner is a great example of how challenging it is to clear this silo - we don’t know for sure what’s in there - they didn’t keep accurate records in those days.
"Anything taken into the building by the workforce of the day was likely to be contaminated because of the environment they were working in.
"There was no alternative disposal route for contaminated material, so everything just went into the silo."
The Pile Fuel Cladding Silo was built in the early 1950s to store cladding from nuclear fuel that had been used in the Windscale Piles, the first reactors at Sellafield.
It was constructed without any means of retrieving the waste inside, effectively making it a 'locked vault' that has stored over 3,200 cubic meters of intermediate-level waste (ILW) for more than 70 years.
After decades of work to figure out how to take waste from a building designed never to be emptied retrievals teams are slowly removing waste.
So far, enough waste to fill 18 storage boxes has been cleared.
Roddy Miller also said: "It’s a fantastic achievement to get to the point where we’re routinely retrieving waste from the building.
"The scale of the challenge was immense - this was a facility that was not designed to be emptied.
"Ironically, a modern-day vacuum cleaner is also playing a part in the waste removal job, sucking up dust created when waste is dropped into storage boxes. It will eventually be consigned as waste itself, joining its 1960s predecessor.
"Removing waste from old buildings like the Pile Fuel Cladding Silo is Sellafield’s most important job today.
Alongside it, there’s another silo and 2 ponds that need to be emptied.
The ponds store used nuclear fuel underwater and were also not designed to be emptied.
Each one of these buildings needs its own unique decommissioning plan - all of them will take decades to complete.
Roddy said: "For the first time in our history, we’re routinely retrieving waste from all 4 of our legacy ponds and silos.
"That’s an incredibly important milestone in our journey to clean up the site.
"But there’s a lot of work yet to do and these four facilities will continue to challenge for many years to come.
"Our focus now is to safely accelerate the pace of retrievals and ultimately eliminate the risk these historic buildings pose.
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