THURSO, UK: Every day, many people around the world lose their dentures. There have been reports about fake teeth being found on the motorway after a woman was sick out of a car window, and dentures being lost during a parachute jump and even during a holiday boat trip in Australia. This time, an engineer, who used to work in a nuclear reactor, has recounted a colleague’s loss of his dentures.

From 1961 to 1994, Don Ryan worked in Dounreay, one of Britain’s first nuclear reactors based in Thurso, Scotland. In a recent interview for Dounreay News, Ryan related the events behind a claim to the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) after a worker had lost his dentures while working.

“There was usually a ‘watch-keeping’ presence in the reactor sphere during runs,” Ryan recalled. “One of the duty team just happened to be leaning on rails beside the instrument panels, facing outwards towards the spherical steel ‘wall’ when he sneezed—quite energetically.”

According to the engineer, half a set of teeth, under the influence of gravity and the internal sphere slope, disappeared from view, rattling down to the, never visited, bottom sphere skirt, which was known to be a difficult area to access. “The lost teeth were the subject of a claim on UKAEA but this was rebuffed in firm administrative terms,” Ryan said.

He reckons that if the teeth were not retrieved long ago by a later shift, a demolition team or archaeologist may make a surprise find some day.