Operators call for help with nuclear clean-up job
IT is one of the largest clean-up jobs in Europe and staff at a former nuclear plant cannot do it themselves.
Experts predict that about 100 double-decker buses worth of radioactive waste could be lying on the site in Caithness.
And now the operators of Dounreay nuclear plant are looking for outside help to clean the place up.
The plant’s operators, Dounreay Site Restoration Limited (DSRL), is responsible for carrying out the £1.6billion decommissioning of the plant by 2030.
And the decommissioning of the plant’s shaft and silo is considered to be one of the largest nuclear clean-up jobs in Europe.
They are now advertising for a “suitably qualified and experienced contractor to design, manufacture, test, install and commission a silo retrieval system”.
It is expected that this job will take around four years to complete.
Contractors will be required to retrieve the radioactive waste from the shaft and silo, but will have to find a method of doing so first.
For the moment, a silo retrieving system, costing about £5 million, will be installed at the site in order for a remotely-handled crane to be lowered into the silo.
The arm will reduce the size of the waste and then load it into a treatment facility ready for processing.
The Dounreay plant was established in the 1950s as a research reactor site, with the last of its three reactors shutting down in 1994.
DSRL was formed as a subsidiary of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) to handle the decommissioning process.