The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) have released the final report on the safety audit of Dounreay.
The safety audit, which was carried out in June 1998 by the HSE and SEPA contained 143 recommendations for improvement. The final report marks the completion of the work needed to discharge 89 recommendations. The remaining recommendations are associated with strategic decommissioning and waste management issues - which will take many decades to address - plus a number of specific recommendations that will be implemented in a medium-term programme over the next few years.
The regulators' said that the most important response by the UKAEA to the audit has been to produce the Dounreay Site Restoration Plan (DSRP). This plan identifies the requirement for approximately 1500 activities that will be needed to complete the decommissioning of the site. The programmes that form part of the DSRP will form the basis for the future regulation of up to 20 major facilities that will need to be constructed over the next 15-20 years. The £4 billion project is the most detailed plan ever produced for the decommissioning of a nuclear site.
