- Dounreay occupies a 135-acre site at
the northern tip of Scotland
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- Six major radioactive waste dumps at
the Dounreay nuclear waste site in the Scottish Highlands may have to be
emptied because of cliff erosion.
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- Thousands of tons of waste will have
to be treated and reburied in a new silo at the Caithness plant at vast
public expense.
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- The bunkers were built when processing
first began at Dounreay in the 1950s and were designed to hold low level
nuclear waste.
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- But it is thought some waste was too
radioactive to have been put there.
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- Dounreay is already committed to recovering
highly radioactive debris dumped in a 200-foot waste shaft.
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- A spokesman for the plant said: "Dounreay
is looking at options. Nothing has been decided - there are various options
and it's early days.
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- "Dounreay is aware that something
will have to be done about these low-level waste pits, but whether or not
that means removing them remains to be decided."
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- The spokesman admitted there was a "potential
risk that erosion of the cliffs could affect the pits but that is hundreds
of years in the future, at the earliest, if at all".
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- Lorraine Mann, a spokesman for Scotland
Against Nuclear Dumping (Sand), said: "I'm horrified about the negligence
that led to this but I'm equally horrified that Dounreay's solution to
the problem is simply to dig it all up and dump it elsewhere on the site
again."
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- 'Carefully monitored'
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- She said Sand would be opposing that
as a solution and added: "It's not really a question of the stuff
being exposed in hundreds of years if the cliffs fall into the sea - this
stuff is going to be radioactive for thousands of years and it will affect
future generations."
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- Mrs Mann said the waste should be stored
above ground where it could be carefully monitored.
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- The Dounreay site was opened in 1955
for the testing of nuclear reactors but its main job now is decommissioning
nuclear waste and reprocessing nuclear fuel.
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- Around 1,200 people work at the plant,
which provides around £30m for the Caithness area's economy.
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