The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority

How to preserve the legacy of Dounreay, site of the UK's unique experiment with fast breeder nuclear reactors, for future generations?

The issue has been exercising the collective thoughts of local community and interested stakeholders in the north of Scotland for a number of years.

 

Dounreay, built in the 1950s but in the process of decommissioning since 1994, has had a huge impact on the surrounding region for generations, and many of the site's distinctive features have become embedded in the local landscape.

Although many have already been demolished and most of the rest, such as the famed sphere, are also scheduled to be flattened, a strategy has been launched setting out how the site's historical significance will be recognised.

The strategy took two years to develop, with input from local community members, and aims to preserve artefacts from the entire site. It marks a first for a nuclear site and may be used as a benchmark for other decommissioning plants.

The 80-page strategy identifies what can be kept for future generations, including uncontaminated items of technology, historical records, photographs, and recorded interviews with workers past and present.

Some of the buildings, including the sphere, still contain major nuclear and chemical hazards and will be retained in the short term. But the strategy rules out their preservation once the hazards have been removed and the buildings have no useful purpose.

Dounreay Site Restoration Ltd (DSRL) will work with an advisory panel drawn from Historic Scotland, the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, National Museums Scotland and Caithness Horizons, a registered museum in Thurso, to identify and preserve aspects of the site.

Other ideas that will be explored include an international conference on nuclear heritage, a national exhibition dedicated to Dounreay, an academic study of the site's significance and a lasting memorial where the site once stood.

DSRL expects to take at least another two decades to complete the clean-out and demolition of the remaining facilities, with the sphere likely to be one of the last facilities removed.