Brand new waste crusher on its way to Dounreay
A NEW crushing machine has been imported to Dounreay to help reduce the amount of waste it will transfer to the new low-level dump being built beside the nuclear plant.
Babcock Dounreay Partnership (BDP) has announced it has a purchased a new super compactor from the Netherlands which will crush drums containing radioactive material to a fifth of their size.
It will replace a previous crusher which developed a terminal fault over a year ago after crushing over 80,000 drums since 2001.
Engineers from Dutch suppliers Fontijne carried out an inspection last year but ruled that the machine was beyond economic repair.
The crusher had a throughput of between 700 to 750 drums a month and since it has been out of action, low-level waste drums have been left to pile up at the plant.
The new machine is expected to be in operation by the beginning of next year and BDP is confident it would service the needs of the site to the end of its scheduled clean-up in 2023.
BDP spokesman Colin Punler said the breakdown had not slowed down the decommissioning process and said that there is enough storage space until the opening of the dump in 2014.
"We are expecting the waste plant to be back up and running by the beginning of 2013 and processing all the low-level waste on site," he said.
"In the meantime we have created additional storage space and it hasn’t affected the actual decommissioning programme because the low-level waste disposal site won’t be ready until 2014."
Mr Punler added: "We are storing low-level waste on site until the plant can get up and running and it will then compact all of the material, ready to go to the low-level waste (LLW) site in two years time.
"Compacting waste is an important part of reducing the amount of material going to the LLW site and getting a new compactor will keep us on track to complete the closure programme within the next decade or so."
BDP state that the total cost of managing all low-level waste through to the end date is valued at around £100 million.
The figure includes the cost of building the new LLW site, transferring the waste, filling the boxes up with grout and putting them in the ground before closing off the site.
BDP was awarded the Dounreay management contract in April when it signed a £1.8m deal to have the former fast reactor complex levelled and cleaned up by September 14, 2023.
Irish firm Graham Construction won the contract to design and build the first two sub-surface vaults in a £15m deal. Excavation work has been completed with construction work currently under way.
The site has planning permission to build six vaults if required but it is not known yet how many will eventually be needed.