Fast Dounreay 'clean-up' on film

GONE in 90 seconds. The Dounreay nuclear plant all but disappears from the north coast in a minute and a half in a new animation showing how the plant will be dismantled over the next 25 years.

The animated flyover shows how the Caithness complex will change from an industrialised landscape to a near greenfield site with just a few scattered buildings by 2032 when decommissioning is complete.

The timescale for cleaning up and knocking down the landmark site, which has been built up over more than 50 years, has been cut from 100 years to the present quarter of a century. The cost will be about £2.9 billion.

Demolition of the site's fuel fabrication plant last month took the number of facilities to have been cleared so far to 100.

An intensive phase of work over the next decade will see reactor buildings and reprocessing plants also disappear.

By the time the clean-up is complete, all that is likely to remain are secure stores for up to 15,000 cubic metres of intermediate-level waste and fuels.

Up to 175,000 cubic metres of low-level waste from the clean-up is earmarked for disposal in adjacent vaults now the subject of a planning application.

Alistair Macdonald, site programme manager for the UK Atomic Energy Authority, said: "There are overwhelming safety, security and environmental reasons for decommissioning Dounreay as quickly as it is safe to do so.

"We've shown several times we can complete the clean-up on an earlier timescale and we're confident we can improve our planning estimates even further to bring in the completion date from the current 2032.

"I don't think we will ever reduce it to 90 seconds but the video does give the public a good impression of our focus on accelerating the clean-up and managing the wastes in a way that makes them safe and secure."