Machine to clear waste at hazardous British nuclear site

A 350-tonne machine costing 125 million U.S. dollars was unveiled Tuesday with the task of tackling one of the world's most challenging nuclear clean-up jobs.

The massive emptying machine will scoop radioactive waste out of a nuclear storage silo at Sellafield in Cumbria in northern England.

The 1960s storage facility has been described as one of the most hazardous buildings in western Europe and contains 10,000 cubic meters of intermediate level waste from the earliest days of Britain's civil nuclear industry.

John Clarke, outgoing CEO of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), unveiled the machine, the first of three being assembled at Sellafield.

Clarke said: "This is an enormous step forward for the Sellafield decommissioning program. It is the culmination of 20 years of work to get to the position where we've got the first machine in place that will retrieve waste from these silos."

The machines will sit on rails on top of the silo's 22 vertical waste compartments. Each compartment is big enough to accommodate six double-decker buses stacked three high.

Once operational, the emptying machines will be maneuvered into place over the top of each compartment to scoop out their contents.

The material will then be packed into nuclear skips and sent to modern waste stores at Sellafield, pending final disposal in Britain's Geological Disposal Facility.

The machines will be ready to start retrieving waste in 2018, taking an estimated 20-25 years to complete the task.

The silo took waste from nuclear power stations from across Britain until its closure in June 2000. Endit