WORK is due to start next year on the biggest facilities ever built in Scotland for managing radioactive waste.
The new plants, which are worth £300 million, are to be built to store almost 200,000 cubic metres of low and intermediate-level radioactive waste as part of the clean-up of the Dounreay nuclear complex.
Solid and liquid intermediate-level radioac
tive waste will be processed in a new treatment plant where it will be mixed with cement and set inside drums and crates.
Once set, the containers will be moved to an adjoining storage area where they will be held pending a Scottish policy for the long-term management of this type of waste.
Highland Council granted outline permission for the new facility in January 2007. Detailed plans were lodged with the local authority in February 2009 and conditional approval has now been received. Construction is due to be completed by 2013.
Low-level radioactive waste from the site decommissioning is being stockpiled until a route is opened for its disposal.
Following a public consultation on the options, the site chose an area of land adjacent to Dounreay for a series of disposal vaults and applied for planning permission in 2006.
The application was approved by Highland Council in January and forwarded to the Scottish Government for consideration.
Ministers decided not to call in the application but asked the local planning authority to include an extra condition about the establishment of a community fund, which was later set at £4 million.
Dounreay Site Restoration, the company responsible for cleaning out and knocking down Dounreay on behalf of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, has now received formal notification that consent has been granted.
Construction of the disposal site is due to begin in 2011, with the first of the vaults ready to receive waste in 2014.
The full article contains 315 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
