Page 348 - Beyond Decommissioning

324 Beyond Decommissioning

Dounreay will be completed by the early 2020s. The state of the site activities as of
November 2017 is given in Dounreay (2017b).
Dounreay has been struggling with SES definition: as there is not obvious redevel-
opment of the site, full de-licensing seemed for many years to be the only option.
However, with the potential legislative changes (see the evolution of UK Govern-
ment’s decommissioning policy as described in Section 5.5) and the new NDA
SES guidance, the Dounreay operator—working in close association with institutions
involved and a number of stakeholders—is in the process of reviewing the SES to final-
ize the right balance of managing/disposing of waste in situ vs disposing of site. This
site has also submitted a planning application to cover all works at the site up to the
IES. Ongoing and future activities at Dounreay are covered under Phase 3 planning.
The decommissioning and remediation of the Dounreay site has proceeded in the fol-
lowing three phases:

Phase 1 (2005–12)
l
Phase 2 (2012–18)
l
Phase 3 (2018—IES)
l
Phase 2 is now coming to an end and work to perfect the site’s performance plan
allows the Phase 3 planning requirements to be finalized.
Current plans intend to be flexible enough to accommodate the optimized SES once
a final decision has been taken. The current definition of SES includes the following:
l radioactive and nonradioactive contamination will be reduced to comply with the regulatory
requirements for the next planned use of the site and the current use of contiguous land,
l where the next planned use does not require a nuclear license, the license may be renounced
with any residual radioactive or nonradioactive contamination being subject to institutional
controls,
l the physical state of designated land will be made suitable for the next planned use of the site;
structures and infrastructure will be made safe or removed where necessary, following a pre-
liminary review of reuse opportunities,
l existing waste disposal will either be emptied or engineered for closure as determined by a
dedicated environmental safety case, and.
l ILW will be stored on the site to comply with current Scottish government policy.
It is assumed that the unrestricted release of the Dounreay site will be reached some
300years from now. This is consistent with 10 half-lives of the most critical fission
90
products (Cs 137 and Sr ) prevailing in the site’s LLW—an internationally shared posi-
tion for the release of LLW sites. Following that, a potential reuse of the land is as a
wildlife habitat. Parts of the site already support insect and bird life. A wild flower
meadow created at Dounreay provides habitat for the Great Yellow—a rare bumblebee,
now restricted to the northern parts of Scotland and islands nearby.
Subsequent to Dounreay decommissioning and remediation, the site mission con-
tinues with the creation of a dedicated heritage strategy, unprecedented for a UK
nuclear site. The goal is to maintain a lasting cultural legacy. The strategy took 2 years
to develop and includes an innovative and customized plan agreed through a large
participation. The plan brought together various national bodies and other stake-
holders to consider nuclear industrial heritage (Gunn and Unique Journey, 2012).