21st September 2026
Dounreay is no longer the giant nuclear research establishment it once was, but a new economic assessment shows that it remains one of the most important pillars of the Caithness and north Sutherland economy.
The question that follows from that is perhaps even more important.
What happens when the number of jobs and the amount of spending generated by Dounreay eventually begin to fall?
At present, nobody can give us a precise answer.
A new Nuclear Decommissioning Authority economic impact assessment, based on activity during 2024/25, estimates that Dounreay supports 2,624 full-time equivalent jobs in Caithness and north Sutherland. That includes 1,315 direct jobs, 735 jobs in the supply chain and another 574 supported by the spending of employees and others connected with the site.
PwC estimates that this represents 23% of all jobs in Caithness and north Sutherland.
That is an extraordinary level of dependence on one site.
The same assessment estimates that Dounreay contributes around £179 million of economic activity to Caithness and north Sutherland, equivalent to almost 20% of the area's GVA.
So the eventual reduction in Dounreay's activity is not simply a question for the people who work behind the security fence. It is potentially a question for the wider economy.
The important thing is that Dounreay knows this
This is not a problem that has suddenly been discovered.
The official NRS Dounreay Socio Economic Impact Strategy for 2025/26 to 2027/28 explicitly says that the organisation wants to help maintain and develop skills, strengthen economic and social infrastructure and diversify the local economy into other sectors.
Its stated aim is to help create a more resilient economy while there are still opportunities to do so.
The strategy also says that staffing levels are not expected to change significantly during the period covered by the strategy, which runs to 2027/28.
That is reassuring in the short term.
It is the longer term that is much harder to see.
There is no 2030, 2040 or 2050 jobs forecast
This is where the latest NDA Business Plan becomes particularly interesting.
The 2026–29 Business Plan gives several specific Dounreay milestones. Removal of the remaining breeder fuel from the Dounreay Fast Reactor is scheduled for completion in 2027/28. Work on the Fuel Cycle Area, shaft and silo and other major decommissioning activities continues through the plan period.
But when it comes to the ultimate completion of the Dounreay site, the document currently says TBD – to be determined.
The reason is that the Dounreay Lifetime Plan is being reviewed. The NDA says dates for the site's major strategic outcomes will be inserted once the new plan has been approved.
That makes it impossible to say with confidence that, for example, Dounreay will employ a particular number of people in 2035 or 2045.
And that is an important distinction.
It would be easy to take the 2,624 jobs identified by PwC today and simply draw a line gradually downwards into the future. But that would be speculation, not evidence.
The work required to decommission Dounreay will change over time. Some activities will finish while others become more important. The workforce required to deal with radioactive materials, dismantle facilities, manage waste and eventually restore parts of the site will therefore change in composition as well as size.
We have seen this problem before
The NDA has been warning about the eventual economic transition for many years.
An earlier official Dounreay document stated that staffing levels and spending would decline as hazards were reduced and removed. It also recognised that some workers would complete their careers at Dounreay while others would need to move into new roles or other sectors.
The response was to put greater emphasis on reskilling workers and helping the local economy diversify.
In other words, the issue is not whether Dounreay will eventually change. It is how successfully Caithness prepares for that change.
There is already a transition strategy
There are some encouraging signs.
Dounreay's latest socio-economic review says that 1,367 people were employed at the site in 2024/25. It also reports substantial local supply-chain spending and a programme of apprenticeships, graduate recruitment and skills development.
During that year Dounreay committed almost £1 million to socio-economic grant funding, with Dounreay-managed NDA funding taking the total to more than £1.1 million. The organisation says that this helped leverage a further £6.1 million from other public and private sources.
There is also the wider Focus North partnership, involving Dounreay, the NDA, Highland Council, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Skills Development Scotland, UHI and the Scottish Government.
Its objectives include increasing the working population, diversifying the economy, increasing the number of private-sector businesses and attracting investment.
These are all attempts to deal with the economic question before the decline becomes severe.
But 23% is a very large number
The PwC assessment puts the scale of the challenge into perspective.
Dounreay's total employment contribution to the local economy was estimated at 23% of all jobs in Caithness and north Sutherland.
That was up from an estimated 11% in the previous economic impact analysis.
The increase does not mean Dounreay has suddenly become twice as important in every respect. It reflects changes in the underlying economic data, employment and the way the impact has been calculated.
Nevertheless, the result is striking.
If an area loses 23% of its jobs overnight, that would obviously be an economic disaster. Dounreay's eventual change will not happen overnight, and that is precisely why there is an opportunity to prepare.
A gradual reduction over many years is very different from a sudden closure.
It gives Caithness time to develop other sources of employment, provided investment actually arrives and the new opportunities are capable of replacing some of the high-value economic activity associated with Dounreay.
The next generation may be the key
One of the most sensible parts of the strategy is therefore its emphasis on skills.
Dounreay has trained 1,178 apprentices since 1955 and continues to recruit apprentices, graduates and trainees.
That creates an interesting possibility.
The objective should not simply be to keep young people in Caithness so that they can eventually work at Dounreay.
It should be to give them skills that can be used at Dounreay and elsewhere.
Engineering, fabrication, electrical work, construction, project management, environmental work, digital technology and other specialist skills could be useful across the emerging energy and infrastructure economy.
That is where Dounreay's eventual decline could potentially become part of an economic transition rather than simply an economic loss.
What should Caithness be asking now?
The latest figures suggest that this is a conversation worth having while Dounreay remains strong.
The question is not simply:
“When will Dounreay close?”
That is the wrong question because the site is not approaching a conventional closure. Decommissioning is a long and complicated process, and the current Lifetime Plan is being revised.
The more useful questions are:
How many jobs does Dounreay expect to support in 2030, 2040 and beyond?
Which types of jobs are expected to grow and which are expected to decline?
How much local supply-chain spending is expected to remain as major projects are completed?
And perhaps most importantly:
What economic activity does the NDA believe Caithness and north Sutherland will need to create to replace the contribution currently made by Dounreay?
At present, the published documents do not give us those answers.
That is not necessarily a criticism. The Lifetime Plan is being reviewed and the future programme is still being developed.
But with Dounreay supporting almost one job in every four across Caithness and north Sutherland, those questions deserve to be part of the economic conversation now, rather than when the decline in spending and employment has already begun.
Dounreay has given Caithness an extraordinary economic foundation for more than 70 years.
The challenge for the next generation is to make sure that foundation becomes a bridge to the next economy, rather than a reminder of the economy that used to exist.