Page 350 - Beyond Decommissioning

326 Beyond Decommissioning

A pilot project to record the memories of six people was completed in March 2012.
While the number of people employed at Dounreay since 1955 is around 11,500, many
of them are now in their 80s or 90s: so, time is running out to capture the atmosphere of
the early nuclear era. All DSRL staff who leave employment are now given a
“capturing memories” form. The questionnaire offers the opportunity to illustrate their
memorable moments at Dounreay. A lot of information material (books, DVDs, and
photo albums) have been produced and are available to the public.
A related achievement was the opening of the national archive for the civil nuclear
industry at Wick (48km from Dounreay). More than 70 years of information and up to
30 million digital records will be stored in this archive, including papers, photographs,
and plans from Dounreay and other UK’s nuclear sites. The center will also store local
archives dating back to the 16th century.
In general, it appears that the North Scotland region has already started to adapt to
life without the nuclear industry (Clark, 2012). Findings show that local businesses are
becoming less dependent on Dounreay, with the number of firms in the county relying
less on the former nuclear complex. In 2006, 15% of jobs were reported to rely on
Dounreay work but in 2011 the figure fell to 10%. However, the final years of
decommissioning should be used to train apprentices for future opportunities. This
study mentioned that Pentland Firth could become Scotland’s first marine energy
park, strengthening the area’s ties with renewable development.

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7.12 Experience from decommissioning at UJV, Czech
Republic (Podlaha and Tous, 2017)

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The UJV Rez ˇ,a.s. (UJV) was established in 1955 as the Nuclear Research Institute
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Rez ˇ. Its activities include nuclear physics, chemistry, nuclear energy, etc. The main
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subjects addressed at UJV have included research and services for NPPs, the devel-
opment of chemical processes for the nuclear fuel cycle, and irradiation services for
industry, agriculture, food processing, and medicine.
After more than 60 years of nuclear, there were a number of obsolete nuclear facil-
ities to be decommissioned. Among a large variety of decommissioning operations,
the following addresses the facility for RAW Management Building 241, whose
decommissioning resulted in the reuse of components, rather than their demolition
and replacement.
The old RAW management facility had been in operation since 1962 and com-
prised two evaporation units, storage tanks, a set of mixed-bed filters, segmentation
and decontamination workshop, compacting and cementation workshop, and solid
RAW stores. It had been initially foreseen that the old facility would be
decommissioned and a new facility would be constructed. However, the outcome
of a feasibility study was that the demolition of the old building and the construction
of a new facility would be very expensive. Moreover, the licensing process (siting of a
new facility) was expected to be difficult. Therefore, it was eventually decided that the
existing facility would be reused after reconstruction.
Decommissioning of the equipment began in 2004; the reconstruction of the entire
facility began in 2010 and was completed in 2013. The total mass of the processed