The 55 hectare Dounreay site, located in Caithness in the north of Scotland, is being decommissioned and restored following decades of research and development of fast reactor technology. Dounreay Site Restoration Limited (DSRL) is the Site Licence Company operating the site on behalf of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) . Under its contract with NDA DSRL has developed a Lifetime Plan (LTP) which outlines the entire programme of work to take the site from its present condition to the agreed end state in 2025. By then all redundant facilities will have been cleared and all that will remain are those radioactive wastes and other nuclear materials for which no disposal route or alternative storage is available. These will be kept in secure, modern storage on the existing site. Many of the sites facilities and much of the infrastructure dates back to the 1950s and some contain significant radioactive hazards. In addition there is sporadic low level ground contamination.
Setting and defining the characteristics of the site end state is vital as the conditions required to be met to achieve the end state are used to define the objectives of decommissioning and restoration projects. The site is regulated accordingly by the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) , the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII), the Office for Civil Nuclear Security (OCNS) , and the Highland Council is the planning and environmental health authority.
The objective of this contract is to secure specialised technical and scientific expertise to the Site Closure Project in order to develop and inform practical clean up activities, produce Environmental Safety Cases, model the site for long term contaminant behaviour and disposal performance and to write concise influential documents for DSRL senior management and the regulators.
Contact: Dounreay Site Restoration Limited, D2003, Dounreay, Thurso, Caithness, Contact: Contract Officer, Attn: Suzanne Mackenzie, UK-Thurso KW14 7TZ. Tel. +44 1847806891. E-mail: site.closure.project@dounreay.com. Fax +44 1847802521.
