Dounreay workers handed jobs lifeline

The complex is being decommissioned, with the loss of around 2,000 jobs over the next 15 years, and will be returned to a greenfield site by 2025 at a cost of 2.6 billion.

Caithness Chamber of Commerce is leading an initiative called Make the Right Connections which aims to help employees of affected businesses find new opportunities.

The chamber will carry out an audit of current skills and business capabilities and match these with opportunities in new industry through retraining, business growth and marketing.

Some 50 companies are involved directly in the clean-up, which accounts for more than 10 per cent of the current GDP of the north Highlands, and many more benefit indirectly from consumer spending.

About 1,500 workers are employed on the site and a further 500 elsewhere on Dounreay contracts.

The on-site figure is due to decrease to about 1,000 workers by 2017 and then drop to 200 to 300 by 2022 as more of the site is cleaned up and demolished.

The largest single workforce is approximately 900, employed by Dounreay Site Restoration Ltd (DSRL), the main clean-up contractor to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.

The two organisations worked together to provide funding for the project. Other sources include Skills Development Scotland and the European Structural Fund.

DSRL has reduced the size of its workforce by approximately 300 in the last five years and the company expects to shrink every year through to 2025.

Michael Dunnett, head of human resources at DSRL, said: "Socio-economic planning and co-operation is an essential part of our site closure programme.

"This new initiative promises to make a significant contribution to the economic wellbeing of the north Highlands when Dounreay has gone.

"It builds on the work we've already started with our own workforce to help them transition. It reaches out to the supply chain as well as our own staff and will help them to identify routes out of decommissioning and into new business and job opportunities in emerging sectors such as marine energy and offshore decommissioning."

The chamber expects to recruit two people to deliver the programme over the next three years, with a target to help 400 people each year.

Last year spending on decommissioning Dounreay was capped at 150 million a year. Firms bidding will compete for ownership of DSRL and the successful bidder will take over in 2012 and complete the clean-up.

The Dounreay nuclear site has been slowly disappearing at a rate of 100sq ft every day over the past five years.

The decommissioning programme has already seen more than 160 redundant buildings and structures demolished.