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Much has been splashed over the Scottish newspaper headlines in recent weeks about the nuclear fuel reporcessing and waste management complex at Dounreay on the north coast of Scotland. This led up to the announcement in June 1998 of a decision to close the reprocessing facility at the Dounreay Nuclear Establishment in the north of Scotland. All this suggests some serious problems in the safety culture at that plant. But it may be asked to what extent was the decision to close was a carefully timed political announcement over something that was going to happen anyway, a response to a publicity campaign in the media, or to serious safety concerns raised by the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate ... or a mixture of all three? The view of one notable campaigner against the plant, that "All Scotland will breathe a sigh of relief", begs the question of whether all the worries engendered in the press over many months were actually as justified as seemed to be the case on the surface.
We do not have the information to make a proper assessment and wait for the full report of the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, which will provide a better basis for reflection than some of the press coverage to date. The supposed "loss" of nuclear material was made much of but it seems to have been, as many observers would have expected, more hype than reality. It is probably still fair to say that the shipment of highly enriched uranium from the Republic of Georgia means a more secure place for such sensitive material than its place of origin. But it is clear that the failure of the back up power supply and the strange revelations about the infamous waste disposal shaft suggest matters of deep safety concern.
Does this mean that Scotland has a bad nuclear safety culture? Nuclear fuel reprocessing is a very different sort of operation from power production. It would be unwise simply to jump to the conclusion that safety problems at a research facility should necessarily be seen as symptomatic of safety at Scotland's nuclear power stations. But this will be one of the points examined in a new SRT study into risk assessment, looking at such matters as the values which underlie the perception of risk by different groups in society, and why some issues become amplified and others never grab the attention. Dounreay will feature as one of the cases examined.
Caithness bore a heavy part of the closure in 1994 of the Prototype Fast Reactor at Dounreay, and the rundown of the associated research. It was the intention to run down the reprocessing side of this by 1999, once all the fuel from the plant had been dealt with. Although this was extended somewhat, the closure announcment is in practice a revision of what was always expected. But it will further raise an important question for a rural area of Scotland where jobs are scarce. SRT is concerned that insufficient attention will be given to encourage redeployment of the highly skilled workforce. The present Government has a duty to Caithness, as well its own political beliefs, to show a much greater concern than its predecesor did over cutting back the English coal industry, about the human cost on this small and extremely remote local community, both in spirit and in economy.
This page has been produced by the Society Religion and Technology Project of the Church of Scotland. For more about our work on other issues, see our Other SRT Project pages, or our SRT Publications List.
We'd also welcome any comments you may have. We don't claim to have said the last word!
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Dr.Donald M.Bruce,This page was last revised on 4 January 1999, and has been accessed
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