Teams at Sellafield have removed 70 tonnes of radioactive waste from the site’s most hazardous building.

Clearing waste from the Magnox Swarf Storage Silos and placing it into safe storage is one of the Sellafield’s most important tasks.

Success has presented a problem, as is often the case in nuclear decommissioning.

An innovative spin on an everyday gardening tool is helping overcome the issue.

Phil Reeve, head of legacy silos for Sellafield Ltd, explained: “As we’ve scooped waste out of compartment 10, we’ve dug a 7-metre crater in the middle of it.

“That creates a risk of the waste around the edges suddenly collapsing into it.”

The answer is the Sellafield version of a garden rake. A 1.4 tonne machine which extends its stainless steel arms outwards then pulls waste into the centre, smoothing it out.

“We’ve always known this procedure was going to be necessary,” said Phil.

“The rake has been developed alongside the retrieval machine. So, it’s a big moment to see it successfully deployed in an active environment for the first time.

“It allows us to crack on with confidence.

“Congratulations to the teams involved, and our supply chain, for achieving this success.”

Work began on clearing waste from Magnox silo in 2022 after two decades of careful preparation.

It’s a complicated job because nobody thought about how the waste would be removed when the building was constructed in the 1960s.

A painstaking process was needed to retrofit an exit route.

It involved assembling huge retrieval machines on top of the building’s vast waste compartments.

Currently, one machine is operational with a further two to start work soon.

So far, all material removed has come from compartment number 10.

But it’s a long road ahead with an estimated 10,000 tonnes of waste to retrieve from 22 compartments.