A vacuum cleaner is among the radioactive waste recovered from a nuclear power station that was never intended to reopen. The fuel cladding silos at Sellafield have been locked up since dumping of waste at the site stopped in the 1970s.
The nuclear power station in Cumbria said it had solved the “difficult problem” of how to get waste out of a building designed never to be emptied, with 18 three-cubic-metre stainless steel boxes now filled.
The Electrolux vacuum cleaner is believed to have been used to suck up radioactive dust during the facility’s operation in the 1950s and 1960s. Roddy Miller, Sellafield’s chief operating officer, said: “The vacuum cleaner is a great example of how difficult it was to clean this silo.
“We’re not sure what was in there – they didn’t keep accurate records at the time.” He also said anything staff brought into the building during this period could have been contaminated. “There was no other way to get rid of the contaminated material, so everything had to go into the silo,” said Mr Miller. ”
Modern vacuum cleaners also play a role in the rubbish removal, sucking up the dust created when it falls into storage bins.
It will eventually be disposed of as waste, just like its 1960s predecessors. Sellafield is also emptying another silo and two ponds that store spent nuclear fuel underwater and were designed to never be emptied. Mr Miller said the cleanup was a “significant milestone” in the decommissioning of the plant.
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