NDA CHIEF ENGINEER AND NUCLEAR SAFETY DIRECTOR WATCHES LANDMARK DEMOLITION

21st December 2007

Outgoing Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) Chief Engineer and Nuclear Safety Director Laurence Williams was at Dounreay recently in time to see the shell of the old fuel fabrication plant come crashing down.

The plant, code-named D1202, was the first of the "atomic factories" built at Dounreay in the 1950s to become operational. For the next 47 years, it used enriched uranium extracted from processing work to manufacture fuel elements for reactors in the UK and abroad. It finally shut down in 2003.

Prior to joining NDA Laurence Williams was Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Nuclear Installations and he was responsible for the major safety audit of Dounreay in 1998 and knew the building when it was a working facility.

"The Dounreay site has changed significantly since the publication of the NII and SEPA Safety Audit Report in 1998 and UKAEA has made considerable progress in its decommissioning and cleanup programme at the site," commented Laurence Williams.

"It is always sad to see the end of an era. The highly skilled people working in D1202 produced high quality research reactor fuel safely for many years. However, once the decision was made to cease nuclear fuel manufacture at Dounreay, clean-up started immediately after shutdown and, just four years on the facility is being demolished. I am impressed that this complex task has been completed in such a short time and it is a very visible sign of progress in the decommissioning work at Dounreay."