Era ends as Dounreay closes

A NUCLEAR era finally came to an end yesterday. The Government announced that Dounreay, the first station to generate electricity from nuclear power, will carry out no more active work and will be decommissioned.

The announcement sparked intense political infighting both between and within the parties, with Labour MPs from coalfield constituencies planning to argue for more pits to be reviewed as an alternative energy source.

But for the 1,400 workers at the plant, and the people in nearby Thurso who depend on it, the impact is minimal. It will take until 2095 to dismantle the plant safely, and doing that will provide employment for hundreds of people for decades.

Yesterday's announcement by Donald Dewar, Secretary of State for Scotland, was hailed as a victory by anti-nuclear groups and seen by Labour MPs as a desperate attempt to staunch the haemorrhage of support to the Scottish National Party, which has led a vocal campaign for Dounreay's closure.

Alex Salmond, leader of the SNP which is threatening to overtake Labour in the elections for the Scottish Parliament, poured scorn on the Government's U-turns over the site, which the ministers recently described as being one of the safest in the world. John Redwood, Tory spokesman on trade and industry, criticised the Government's stand as a "shambles".

Ministers denied the timing was connected with the disclosure earlier this week that up to 170kg of weapons-grade uranium - enough to make 12 atomic bombs - was unaccounted for from the 1960s. Instead John McKeown, director of the UK Atomic Energy Authority, insisted that he had recommended the closure in March.

But Labour backbenchers saw it as an attempt to halt the rise of the SNP. "People are saying it's the only way to stop us sinking further against the SNP," said one Labour MP.

Anti-nuclear campaigners said the decision vindicated their years of campaigning against the safety of the plant, located on the north coast of Scotland. But Downing Street said the decision was based on economic grounds. Mr Dewar emphasised that the announcement will not affect jobs in the area for at least a generation.

Even after the reprocessing of fuel is complete, in the next few years, the decommissioning of all the buildings on site - some of which are highly radioactive internally - will take another 100 years.

The Dounreay project was started in 1953, aiming to develop British expertise making commercial nuclear reactors. It relied on a technology called the "fast-breeder reactor", which generated its own fuel. But problems were found with the cooling system, which relied on liquid sodium, and the expense meant the fast-breeder reactor was never economic.

The Tory government announced the end of the fast-breeder programme in 1988. The reactor was shut down in 1993. Reprocessing carried on until 1996 when the last commercial shipment arrived from Australia. That reprocessing will be completed in 2006.

Lorraine Mann, of the pressure group Scotland Against Nuclear Dumping, said: "The decommissioning will be a long and hazardous exercise. The truth about what was done there must come out. There have been all sorts of stories including ones that lead was nailed to the walls of some buildings to stop radioactivity getting out."