Nuclear mattersDSRL in £13 million Dounreay decommissioning contract
Britain’s Dounreay fast reactor was proclaimed as “the system of the next century”; this was in the 1960s; the last 15 years have seen the site develop into a nuclear reactor decommissioning project
The Dounreay fast reactor experiment is one of the milestones of the nuclear age (see brief history below), so we keep an eye on developments there. The latest: Dounreay Site Restoration (DSRL) has signed a £13 million contract with BNS Nuclear Services to provide operations support for the decommissioning program of the site’s two fast reactors. The three-year contract will begin in November and includes an option to extend by up to two years.
BNS will be taking the project over from a consortium of four companies. DSRL believes this will increase the flexibility of the workforce by integrating procedures for both reactor projects under one management program. According to David Hubbard, BNS Nuclear Services site agent, the contract will allow BNS to introduce innovations to the western half of the site. Hubbard said: “This contract is an excellent result for the efforts our team put into understanding the requirements of the work and proposing a program of short- and medium-term improvements. Our transition team is working hard to effect the smooth transfer of the workforces from the other contractors at the end of October, while meeting all the safety requirements associated with the site license conditions.”
DSRL has appointed Doug Shanks to lead a team that will oversee the phased merger of both reactor projects.
History: The Dounreay experiment
Britain needed more electricity to rebuild its economy after the Second World War. The discovery of nuclear energy offered hope. The uranium metal needed to make nuclear energy, however, was very scarce - and Britain’s priority, like other post-war powers, was the development of nuclear weapons.
Scientists persuaded the U.K. Government they could generate electricity from a new type of reactor which would not jeopardize the weapons program. The fast breeder reactor would convert an unusable form of uranium to plutonium which could by recycled and turned into new reactor fuel. It would breed its own fuel, offering the prospect of electricity in abundance.
After early research in England, agricultural land next to a disused wartime airfield in Caithness was chosen to test the reactor and the chemical plant that would be needed to take the idea from experiment to production. By the 1960s, the scientists had demonstrated it would work. The target now was to have fast reactors in commercial production by the late 1970s. It was, said Minister for Technology Frank Cousins in 1966, “the system of the next century,” adding: “They will be able to produce new nuclear fuel in the course of their operation and offer a prospect of even greater economy, as well as conservation in the use of uranium.”
The fast reactor proved to be more expensive than thought, however, and by the 1980s uranium was no longer in scarce supply. In 1988 Britain decided it would not need fast reactors for the foreseeable future and canceled the program, signaling the end for Dounreay.
The 1990s saw Dounreay evolve as a decommissioning site. Spare capacity in the site’s fuel plants was offered to foreign customers but this business was wound up in the late 1990s when a decision was taken to close the site and concentrate wholly on decommissioning and clean-up.
