Retro '60s Vacuum Cleaner Surprises Workers in Sealed Nuclear Waste Facility

In the 1960s, a vacuum cleaner has been found amidst lethal radioactive debris at what is considered one of the planet’s earliest nuclear facilities, now undergoing cleanup operations.

The home Electrolux vacuum cleaner was employed to remove dust from the Sellafield nuclear facility. Cumbria During the 1950s and 1960s, this material was disposed of and securely stored alongside other radioactive waste within six specific sections of an area called the Pile Fuel Cladding Silo. This occurred during the facility’s decommissioning process in the 1970s.

The nuclear waste, intended not to be extracted, is currently being removed from the facility, which is considered one of the 'four most dangerous structures' in Western Europe. This retrieval forms part of the comprehensive decommissioning procedure, and up until now, 18 specialized steel canisters have been loaded with waste from the silo.

• Walker from Lake District air-lifted to hospital following an event during the 'hottest afternoon of the year'.
• 'Criminal loophole' allows individuals to park on your driveway - how to handle this situation if it occurs.

Roddy Miller, the chief operating officer at Sellafield Ltd, stated: "This vacuum cleaner serves as an excellent illustration of the difficulties involved in cleaning out this silo—we can't be certain about its contents—as record-keeping wasn't precise back then. Any materials brought into the facility by past workers probably were radioactive due to contamination." environment they were working in.

There were no other options for disposing of the contaminated material, so all of it ended up in the silo.

The Pile Fuel Cladding Silo was erected in the early 1950s to accommodate the cladding from nuclear fuel that had been utilised in the Windscale Piles, which were the initial reactors located at Sellafield. This structure lacked any mechanism for removing the waste within, essentially turning it into an ‘immovable repository’ holding upwards of 3,200 cubic metres of intermediate-level waste (ILW), a condition that has persisted for more than seven decades.

Following years of effort to determine how to empty a structure explicitly built never to require cleaning, retrieval crews are gradually extracting the waste. Up until now, they have managed to clear an amount equivalent to filling 18 storage containers.

Roddy Miller commented: "Achieving routine retrieval of waste from the structure is remarkable. The magnitude of the task was enormous—as this was an installation never intended for emptying."

Paradoxically, a contemporary vacuum cleaner is also contributing to the waste disposal task, drawing in debris generated when refuse is deposited into storage containers. Ultimately, this machine too will become waste, alongside its 1960s counterpart.

The top priority for Sellafield at present is to remove waste from older structures such as the Pile Fuel Cladding Silo.

Next to it, there’s another silo along with two ponds that require emptying. These ponds hold spent nuclear fuel submerged in water and weren’t originally intended to undergo this process.

Every single one of these structures requires a distinct decommissioning strategy – they will all take multiple decades to finish.

Roddy stated: "For the first time in our history, we're consistently extracting waste from each of our fourlegacyponds andsilos. This marks a crucial step in our mission to remediate this location."

However, there is still considerable work ahead, and these four sites will remain challenging for many years to come. Currently, our priority is to expedite the retrieval process safely and eventually remove the risks posed by these historical structures.

Sign up for our daily newsletter LANCS LIVE NEWS to receive all the major stories from throughout Lancashire straight into your mailbox.