Dounreay recycles 98% of reactor decommissioning waste

The UK site’s oldest reactor, the Dounreay Materials Test Reactor, is being demolished and the waste recycled.

The fuel element storage block has now been demolished. This steel tank was 4.7m high and 2.8m in diameter, surrounded by an iron-shot concrete cylinder, and was capped off by a thick steel top plate. Historically it housed cooling irradiated fuel elements after their removal from the reactor.

During its dismantling, workers segregated recyclable and re-usable material from the waste products. Approximately nine tonnes of steel and 33 tonnes of lead will be recycled, and around 95 tonnes of concrete will be re-used off site.

Facility Manager Donald Buchanan says, ‘We have carried out a robust programme of characterisation and sampling work to determine the appropriate disposal options and as a result we will be able to recycle and re-use the majority of the material. Only 2% of the waste produced will be disposed of in our low level waste vaults.’

The Dounreay Materials Test Reactor was the first operational nuclear reactor in Scotland and achieved criticality in 1958. It was built to test the effects of radiation on different materials and operated for 11 years.