Scotland's First Reactor to Be Demolished

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Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland)--A tender will be offered soon for the demolition of Scotland's first operational nuclear reactor at Dounreay.

According to site operator Dounreay Site Restoration Limited (DSRL), the contract will appear soon in the in the Official Journal of the European Union for the three-year project to demolish the Dounreay Materials Test Reactor (DMTR). The reactor became Scotland's first operational reactor in 1958, achieving first criticality 60 years ago. It was constructed with steelwork weighing in at almost 600 tonnes and stands on foundations more than 25 metres in diameter. The reactor was used to test the effects of irradiation on metals and was the only reactor on the site to use heavy water instead of liquid metal as a coolant. For a time Dounreay was the U.K.'s centre for the research and testing of fast breeder reactors (FBR) and submarine reactors.

"This month we celebrate the 60th anniversary of the first criticality in Scotland, which took place in a temporary test rig," explained Bill Lambie, project manager at DSRL. "This was an historic moment because it put Dounreay on the map as the UK's centre of fast reactor research, and encouraged the local population to acquire scientific skills and abilities that have been associated with the area ever since."

He added: "[Criticality] was an immense achievement, and we are now poised to demolish its successor and the oldest reactor on site, DMTR. The removal of DMTR from the skyline will be a significant step for Dounreay, and will be a real and visible sign of the decommissioning progress being made."

The winning bidder for the £7 million ($9 million) contract is expected to be announced in the first half of 2018. Fuel was removed soon after the reactor shut down in 1969 and many of the surrounding facilities, including cooling towers, emergency control room and pipework have since been cleared out and demolished. The control room desk and panels, which were key to the operation of the reactor, were transferred to Caithness Horizons in 2015 where they remain on display. The final support building is on track to be knocked down by the end of the year.

Industrial Info is tracking another project at the site to build a nuclear waste storage facility offering more storage space for 500-litre waste drums and a drum inspection area. It is expected to be completed by early 2018. For additional information, see December 1, 2015, article--Scottish Nuclear Waste Storage Facility Moves Forward.

The Dounreay site also hosted two additional reactors in its lifetime. The Dounreay Fast Reactor was commissioned in 1959 with a generating capacity of 14 megawatts (MW) and was decommissioned in 1977. The third and final reactor to be built on the Dounreay site was the Prototype Fast Reactor (PFR). PFR was a pool-type fast breeder reactor, cooled by liquid sodium and fuelled with MOX. It achieved criticality in 1974 with a capacity of 250 MW and was decommissioned in 1994.

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