Dounreay Information

Dounreay was the UK’s centre of fast reactor research and development from 1955 until 1994 and is now Scotland’s largest nuclear clean-up and demolition project. This was where some of the nation’s leading scientists and engineers experimented with plutonium, uranium and other metals to give Britain the knowledge to generate electricity using a more advanced type of nuclear reactor. Their research and development is now complete. The equipment and materials they used to gain this knowledge is being packed up and the environment restored by a new generation of staff skilled in nuclear clean-up. Today, Dounreay is part of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority Group and a site of construction, demolition and waste management, all of it designed to return the site to as near as practicable its original condition.