Crusher’s failure creates huge waste logjam at Dounreay
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DOUNREAY’s site operating company is facing a massive backlog of 13,000 drums of low level waste (LLW) while it awaits a replacement crushing machine.
DSRL has confirmed its new super compactor, which can squash drums to a fifth of their size, will not be installed until April 2014.
The original 22-year-old machine, compacted over 80,000 drums before it developed a terminal fault in 2011. It is due to be taken away in two months’ time. In the meantime, steel drums of LLW are having to be kept in a secure location on site, with 6463 drums waiting to be compacted.
By the time the new super compactor is installed, it is thought there will be at least another 6000 barrels added to the logjam.
A DSRL spokeswoman said the company expect the backlog to rise significantly before the new facility is installed, but said it would not impact on the site’s decommissioning end date of 2023.
"As of Friday, January 11, there were 6463 drums in storage awaiting compaction," she said.
"Drums continue to arise at a variable rate between then and when super compaction resumes – scheduled for April 2014 – at a rate typically of 100 drums per week.
"When super compaction resumes, it is planned to work a shift system to reduce the backlog whilst processing new arisings."
The spokeswoman added: "The backlog will take over a year to process and will not impact on the site’s critical path to reach interim end state as the supercompactor has capacity to treat ongoing as well as backlog waste with additional run hours.
"The drums will be stored on site in the existing temporary stores until the new LLW disposal site is in operation, when they will be moved there."
Babcock Dounreay Partnership (BDP), which has the contract to complete Dounreay’s clean-up, announced in September it had purchased a new super compactor from Dutch company Fontijne.
The company carried out an inspection into the original machine in 2011 and found it 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, LLW waste drums have been left to pile up at the plant.
Once the new compactor is in operation and the drums have been compacted, they will be moved to the new LLW dump, which is currently under construction.
Irish firm Graham Construction won the contract to design and build the first two sub-surface vaults in a £15m deal.
The site has planning permission to build six vaults if required but it is not known yet how many will eventually be needed.
BDP has estimated it will cost about £100 million to manage all the LLW through to the site closure.
