Dounreay
F1
Decommissioned Reactors ( gross ):
The nuclear power station Dounreay is located near a ruined castle on the north coast of the county of Caithness in Highland County on the north coast of Scotland. This castle is now located on a site which was used by the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority ( UKAEA ) and the Ministry of Defence (Ministry of Defence ). The area is known as the site of several nuclear facilities, three of which belonged to the UKAEA and were operated by up to 31 March 2008. There are two blocks: DFR and PFR.
History
The Dounreay Nuclear Power Development Establishment was set up next to an old military airfield. It was selected in the early 1950s as a center for the development of the fast breeder reactor and associated fuel cycle ( fuel fabrication, reprocessing ).
The Ministry of Defence business here for 40 years an organization known as the Vulcan NRTE (Vulcan Naval Reactor Test Establishment), were developed in the nuclear drives for the nuclear submarines of the Royal Navy. The device is also known under the name of Admiralty Reactor Test Establishment ( ARTE ).
Besides the three, mainly for economic reasons ( Painted subsidies) decommissioned reactors and numerous waste treatment facilities are located on the grounds of two disused reprocessing plants. The first system is the MTR Fuel Reprocessing Plant D1204 for recovering highly enriched uranium from spent fuel in domestic and foreign material testing reactors ( MTR). Among other fuels from the MTR reactors at Dounreay and Harwell were reprocessed. The plant has been in operation since 1958. A second plant was used for the reprocessing of highly enriched fuel from the breeder reactor DFR. The plant was rebuilt from 1975 to 1979 for investment D1206, was worked up in the spent mixed-oxide fuel from the breeder reactor PFR.
Meanwhile, the processing of nuclear fuel has been set and started the demolition work. On 1 April 2005 the site was transferred to the ownership of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA ), and since April 1, 2008, most plants are operated by this.
Incidents
On 10 May 1977, a liquid mixture of two kilograms of sodium and potassium in a 65 meter deep shaft was lowered. In the bay camped among other spent fuel elements from the 1960s. This underground landfill was flooded for Radioactivity shielding with seawater. From the chemical is known that pure sodium and potassium react in liquid form very strong with water. There was an explosion, came into the ground by the radioactive material and appears to have been widely disseminated. The approximately seven -ton concrete cover of the pit was thrown while three to four feet away, a steel plate with a diameter of five feet flew about twelve yards. Parts from the shaft flew up to about 40 meters from the beach, other parts were found up to 75 meters away. In the foreshore annually more than ten millimeter-sized radioactive particles have been found since 1983, one at a much visited beach. The incident became known only in 1995 by a commission of a competent health ministry report. The foreshore of Dounreay was shut off then.
After discovering a small leak in the cooling cycle the resolver operation of D1206 was initially temporarily suspended in October 1996. In July 2001, the British government decided definitely not to include the reprocessing operation.
Further development
In Dounreay a repository for radioactive waste is provided to accommodate the waste generated from the dismantling of nuclear installations. Because of the presence of radioactive compounds of uranium and plutonium on the entire site, the system is considered a security risk and strictly guarded.
The DFR in October 1986
Data of the reactor units
The nuclear power station Dounreay had three reactors, two of which were commercial power reactors: