Big Brute Wet Industrial Vacuum Cleaners are being used to help clean up Magnox’s pond decommissioning programme.
Magnox is the management and operations company responsible for safely managing 12 nuclear sites and one hydroelectric plant in the UK. They are responsible for managing the sites through their lifecycles, overseeing all aspects of defuelling and decommissioning.
Three of their sites here in the UK have achieved major milestones in the decommissioning of their ponds. These ponds contain empty skips, sludge and other debris which need to be removed before draining the water. This is a very challenging and radioactive environment.
Tony Wells, programme delivery manager said “It’s difficult to know exactly what’s in the ponds because the equipment agitates the water, limiting visibility. There was, in fact, more sludge and debris than we anticipated.”
Once all the debris was cleared, the Big Brute Industrial Vacuum retrieved all the residual sludge from the bottom of the ponds. The contents of the Big Brute were then pumped into shielded tanks, ahead of the retrieval and treatment process. This advanced vacuum drying system, dries the waste, leaving smaller, more stable volumes for storage.
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Member-created content 3 years ago | By Made in Britain