Dounreay’s waste on the move

ENVIRONMENTALISTS have attacked plans by the Dounreay nuclear plant to begin shipping tonnes of radioactive waste from the north of Scotland back to foreign customers.

The first 153 tonnes is due to leave the Caithness complex in the next few weeks for a research reactor in Mol, Belgium, that produces isotopes for nuclear medicine across Europe.

The waste, in a cement form, is contained in 500-litre steel drums and will be transported by sea in 21 shipments over the next four years.

The return of several hundred tonnes of intermediate level waste (ILW) to customers in Australia and Germany is dependent on talks with the Scottish Government.

Dounreay is being decommissioned and returned to a near greenfield site at a cost of £2.6 billion over the next 15 years.

A report yesterday from Dounreay Site Restoration Ltd (DSRL), in charge of the clean-up, says decommissioning will produce 300,000 tonnes of radioactive material. While 99 per is due to remain at Dounreay, the material from abroad will be shipped out. This includes the return of waste to customers of the former UK Atomic Energy Authority fuel services business who sent their fuel for reprocessing in the 1990s, and the return to UK national stocks of plutonium and uranium that could be used to generate electricity.

DSRL said the storage of foreign waste is limited to a maximum of 25 years, in accordance with UK government policy.Alex Anderson, head of waste and fuels at DSRL, said: “We’re ten years into the decommissioning of the site.

“We’ve transported foreign fuel over the last ten years, we’re ready now to return the foreign waste and next year we’ll be ready to start removal of the UK fuel. We’re delivering the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority’s mission to close down the site and honouring the government’s pledge to send back foreign waste.

“Of the 300,000 tonnes of radioactive material we need to manage as part of the closure, it is a relatively small amount – a fraction of 1 per cent – that is earmarked to leave the site.”

But Stan Blackley, chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland, said environmentalists were against transporting nuclear waste between countries.

He said: “Whether the waste is reprocessed or not, in cement or not, doesn’t really matter, it’s a bad idea and a gamble no government should be prepared to take. Sending waste from Scotland to anywhere is unnecessary and risky, with enormous potential for accidents, mistakes and even sabotage. It should not even be considered.”

The exact amount of foreign waste to be returned will depend on the outcome of a recent consultation by the Scottish and UK governments on waste substitution. This would allow former UKAEA customers to exchange their waste at Dounreay for an equivalent amount from a different stock held by the NDA.

The Belgians have not requested substitution, so DSRL obtained clearance from the Scottish Environment Protection Agency under EU regulations to enable the Belgians to collect their waste.

The material accumulated at Dounreay includes nuclear fuel, which can be used again, and radioactive waste, which cannot.

Higher activity wastes have built up in stores and underground disposal facilities, such as the shaft.

These facilities are being cleaned out, the wastes recovered, sorted and repackaged. In addition, the clean-out and dismantling of the redundant research facilities will generate more waste, all of which needs segregated according to its hazard and made safe for storage.

Dounreay has also come under fire recently over plans to transport radioactive material by train to Sellafield in Cumbria for reprocessing.

If approved, the first of 46 shipments could start in January.