Dounreay

Dounreay at forefront of nuclear decommissioning – 70 years after it all began. Britain emerged from World War II intent on harnessing nuclear energy to power its recovery. But uranium was scarce and its use prioritised for weapons production, so the country launched one of its most visionary scientific experiments: to research and develop a new type of power station that would create more fuel than it consumed. Dounreay was chosen as the test site for this new technology of fast breeder nuclear reactors after several other locations across Caithness and Sutherland, from Littleferry to Reiss, had been looked at and ruled out. Over the next 40 years, scientists and engineers proved that plutonium could be harvested from a reactor and recovered in adjacent chemical works to create new fuel to generate electricity. As uranium prices continued to fall, the economics of electricity from plutonium became uncompetitive. In 1988 the UK government announced its withdrawal from fast-reactor technology and within six years Dounreay’s Prototype Fast Reactor (PFR) had been shut down. Now, after leading the world for four decades in research and development of nuclear technology, Dounreay is again at the forefront of science and engineering – this time in the skills and innovation needed to dismantle one of the most complex and hazardous legacies of the 20th century. Dounreay today is a site of major construction, demolition and waste management. The experimental facilities are being cleaned out and knocked down, and the environment is being made safe for future generations. Around 180 separate facilities were built on 135 acres of land at Dounreay. About 50 of these had a history of working with nuclear materials.