Dounreay Site Restoration Ltd -WRACS plant

WRACS plant

All solid low-level waste generated at Dounreay is sent to the Waste Receipt Assay Characterisation and Supercompaction facility, or WRACS.

This is a former training school in the Fuel Cycle Area that underwent a £6 million conversion in 1995/96.

Here, 200-litre drums containing solid items of waste arrive from across the site.

Each drum is loaded onto a conveyor belt to undergo a series of checks.

From a nearby control room, staff scan each drum using real time radiography to check that the contents match those declared by the decommissioning team who consigned the drum.

Each drum is measured for different types of radiation to ensure it meets the criteria for low level waste.

If a drum fails any of these tests, it is returned to the decommissioning team.

Once a drum has cleared these checks, the drum moves into a supercompaction unit where 2000-tonne force reduces it to a fifth of its size.

Finally, the “puck” is lifted into a steel crate known as a half-height ISO. Once this crate is full, it is removed from the building and taken to a large storage building at the site.

Each drum is bar-coded and a computerised record kept of every one that is processed in the plant.