Nuclear Waste Retrieval Begins at UK's Oldest Waste Store

After weeks of preparation and checks, the Pile Fuel Cladding Silo retrievals team gathered around the monitors in the control room of the 70-year-old plant to witness the moment a state-of-the-art robotic arm reached into the silo to remove and repackage waste for the first time.

Built in the 1950s to store cladding from used nuclear fuel from the Windscale Piles – the first nuclear reactors to be built at Sellafield – the vast concrete silo was designed as a ‘locked vault’ with no plan for how to retrieve its contents or decommission the building.

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Retrievals from the silo mark a significant step forward in the clean-up and decommissioning of one of the most hazardous buildings on the Sellafield site.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/sellafield-makes-history-with-first-retrievals-from-oldest-store