Dounreay chemical hazard destoryed

ONE of the most hazardous legacies of Britain’s early atomic research has been destroyed, bosses at Dounreay power station have revealed.

The last of 57,000 litres of liquid metal have been removed from the main cooling circuit at the experimental fast breeder reactor at the redundant nuclear power station in Caithness.

The liquid metal, which was used as a coolant, was a major chemical and radiological hazard.

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The Dounreay reactor, which was constructed in the 1950s, was one of only two ever built in Britain to run on liquid metal.

In September 2007, the first of a total of 354 batches of the liquid metal - an alloy of sodium and potassium - was lifted from the reactor’s primary circuit. Each batch then underwent a chemical neutralisation process.

The work has now been completed a year ahead of schedule.

Environment Secretary Richard Lochhead saw the last batches being processed and said: “This is a tremendous achievement and another example of how the highly-skilled Dounreay workforce is delivering a world-class clean-up operation at one of the most complex nuclear sites in Europe.

“The Scottish Government welcomes today’s announcement that Dounreay have successfully destroyed 57,000 litres of highly radioactive liquid metal from the Dounreay fast reactor.”

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) said it was “extremely pleased” the liquid metal no longer posed a hazard.

Nigel Lowe, head of the NDA’s Dounreay programme, said: “This was very high on the list of hazards we wanted reduced across our whole estate.

“It’s a significant achievement for Dounreay and joins a long list of examples whereby the site has delivered on key objectives and technical challenges.”

Andy Swan, the engineer in charge of the reactor decommissioning, said: “It’s been a fantastic achievement by the whole team to deliver this milestone a year ahead of schedule and to higher environmental standards than anyone thought possible at the design stage.

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“This stuff was highly volatile and highly radioactive. The chemical and radiological hazards combined to make this a real danger to the workers involved, so we needed to be certain they were protected at every step of the process until the hazard was destroyed. Their safety record throughout this operation was excellent.”