Dounreay Site Restoration Ltd

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The Site

Welcome to Dounreay, the UK’s centre of fast reactor research and development from 1955 until 1994 and now Scotland’s largest nuclear clean-up and demolition project.

This was where some of the nation’s leading scientists and engineers experimented with plutonium, uranium and other metals to give Britain the knowledge to generate electricity using a more advanced type of nuclear reactor.

Their research and development is now complete. The equipment and materials they used to gain this knowledge is being packed up and the environment restored by a new generation of staff skilled in nuclear clean-up.

After four decades of research, stretching back to the earliest days in the industry, taking apart their legacy is a major undertaking.

Today, Dounreay is a site of construction, demolition and waste management, all of it designed to return the site to as near as practicable its original condition.

The experimental nature of many of its redundant facilities means the clean-up and demolition requires innovation as well as great care.

The plan for decommissioning the site anticipates all redundant buildings will be cleared in the short term. The target date of 2025 is being reviewed in light of Government funding constraints. In the longer term, controls will be put in place on the use of contaminated land until 2300 or so.

Decommissioning Dounreay is recognised internationally as one of the most complex nuclear clean-up challenges in the world. The skills and enterprise it fosters are giving Scottish companies a platform to compete in the global decommissioning market.