The threats at Dounreay

Dounreay - fast reactors and reprocessing now decommissioning and contamination

Since this feature was written much as changed at Dounreay - details can be found in our Latest News pages and in other features. For example: the government announced an end to new commercail reprocessing contracts; two reprocessing plants were closed by accidents and safety concerns; new contamination has been found; a link to nuclear weapons has been admitted; etc., etc., etc.,

The Dounreay Nuclear Establishment near Thurso on the north coast of Scotland was chosen in the 1950s as the centre for the UK's fast breeder reactor programme - a new type of reactor, fuelled by plutonium. Dounreay was chosen because it was isolated and away from large centres of population. The site is operated by the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) which had crown immunity from regulation and inspection until five years ago.

The first reactor, the Dounreay Fast Reactor (DFR), was closed in the late 1970s when a new bigger Prototype Fast Reactor (PFR) was built. PFR was closed in 1994 when the UK virtually pulled-out of fast reactor development. Dounreay has two reprocessing plants - a Mixed Oxide plant for reprocessing fast reactor-type fuel, capable of handling 5-6 tonnes a year, and a Materials Testing Reactor (MTR) plant which works with weapons-grade highly-enriched uranium (HEU) fuel used in research reactors around the world and capable of reprocessing about a tonne of fuel a year. Dounreay can also manufacture HEU fuel. There are waste pits for disposing of low-level waste on-site and intermediate, plutonium contaminated, waste stores with high-level wastes kept in cooled steel underground tanks. . An unrecorded mixture of wastes was also dumped in a 65m deep shaft, initially dug to provide access for the site's discharge pipeline which takes liquid waste into the Pentland Firth and North Sea. Dumping was stopped in 1977 after an explosion in the shaft. Independent studies have shown the risk of another explosion remains today and UKAEA has been told it must prepare plans to remove the waste from the shaft. Waste particles from the plant, some potentially lethal, have been found on the foreshore at Dounreay (see photo above). Radioactive contamination has also been found all over the site and outside since a full-scale monitoring programme was started last year in response to pressure from regulatory authorities and public concern.

The cause of the particles found on the foreshore and the other contamination is not yet known - although UKAEA has blamed much of the site's contamination on leaks from unsealed flasks used in the past for transporting material around the site.

With the closure of the PFR reactor in 1994 Dounreay began its busiest-ever reprocessing programme. Over 30 tonnes of core and blanket fast reactor fuel, as much as has been reprocessed in over 30 years, is being reprocessed in just five or six years. This will lead to greatly increased discharges into the environment.

Privatisation

Much of the Dounreay site is now being managed and run by private contractors. The Government has split the UKAEA into two - the profitable, non-nuclear parts will be sold-off in 1996 to private investors while the government will retain ownership of the unprofitable, nuclear, sections together with responsibility for waste liabilities and decommissioning.

The whole Dounreay site is now managed privately and private companies have been contracted for some of the site's reprocessing work. In addition the major decommissioning programme at the site is being done by private companies and this has led to concerns about safety on the site. The local community, which previously strongly supported Dounreay's work, is now divided and disillusioned as local people lose jobs and commercial attitudes take over in what was previously seen as a research establishment.

HEU hopes dashed

Dounreay's smaller MTR reprocessing plant has been closed on a care and maintenance basis for over 18 months due to lack of work. UKAEA had hoped to secure a major 10-year programme of work reprocessing American HEU fuel used in research reactors around the world, but the US Department of Energy has rejected the idea of reprocessing the fuel because of proliferation concerns among other reasons. A referendum in the local community by Caithness Against Nuclear Dumping and organised independently by the Electoral Reform Society came out heavily against Dounreay's plan to import the HEU fuel from around the world.

While Dounreay is hoping to secure contracts for the MTR plant to reprocess fuel from Australia and a few European reactors hoping to use HEU fuel from Russia after processing at Dounreay there is a big question mark on the plant's future. Whether this work, if it comes to Dounreay, will raise enough income for the Department of Trade and Industry to decide to keep the plant open remains to be seen.

Trident Submarine reactor at HMS Vulcan

Next door to Dounreay is HMS Vulcan where the reactors for the UK's nuclear submarines have been developed. After the reactor for the Polaris submarines there is now an operating Pressurised Water Reactor at HMS Vulcan, which is owned by the Ministry of Defence but operated by Rolls Royce, for the new Trident nuclear submarines. Much of HMS Vulcan's work, however, is devoted to trying to solve the serious long-term problems the submarines have experienced with the reactor's cooling systems. HMS Vulcan discharges all its liquid wastes through the Dounreay pipeline and Dounreay also stores the solid wastes.

Discharges to increase

Controversy presently surrounds Dounreay's application to the H.M.Industrial Pollution Inspectorate (HMIPI) for revised authorisations to discharge liquid and gaseous waste into the environment. Because of the increased fast reactor reprocessing and possible HEU work Dounreay wants to greatly increase its radioactive discharges.

In the past Dounreay has discharged on average only 10 per cent of its authorised limits. Dounreay has now applied to HMIPI for similar limits to be set, it plans to discharge nearly 50 cent of the limits. While the limits will remain the same - actually discharges will increase.

There have been hundreds of protests to HMIPI objecting to the proposed authoristations and an unprecedented number of local authorities - the Shetland, Orkney and Western Isles Islands Councils, Highland Council and Sutherland District Council and Highland Regional Council, the last two since disappearing under local government re-organisation - have called for a public inquiry into the application.

Dounreay's work has also been the focus of much international concern, particularly from the Nordic countries who, like shetland, rely heavily on a clean marine environment for their vital fishing industries. Iceland, Faroe, Norway and Denmark have all been among the countries who have protested to the UK about Dounreay in recent years.