Tribute paid to ‘a great engineer’
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TRIBUTE has been paid to a veteran Dounreay engineer who died at the age of 90.
Jonathan (Jon) Kirk, who worked at the plant for over 30 years, was described as "a great engineer from a bygone era" by Mike Brown, reactors decommissioning manager at the site.
"Jon Kirk worked at the DFR fast reactor from its construction in the 1950s to its shutdown in 1977. He continued to assist in the decommissioning of the plant until his retirement in 1986, but Jon never really retired," Mr Brown told the Caithness Courier.
"He worked for me, under contract, until he was 83 years old, providing a wealth of information and support for the decommissioning teams.
"If drawings did not reflect the current condition of the reactor, Jon would remember the changes that had been made and always kept us on the straight and narrow.
"At 83 he was still sharp as a tack and even when his contract had finished he still asked us to give him a call if we thought he could help. And we did call him on a number of occasions."
Mr Brown added: "That level of detailed knowledge has been invaluable to the decommissioning teams for the last 30 years.
"Jon always took delight in teaching his young apprentices and his vast knowledge and experience of the DFR fast reactor helped to make our decommissioning task that bit easier.
"Jon is sorely missed. Clearly from the old school of engineers, he is an example of why we need to decommission the plant promptly while the knowledge is still available. He was a great engineer from a bygone era."
Mr Kirk, who was born in 1921, joined the Atomic Energy Authority at Dounreay in 1956 and spent 30 years there.
During his last nine years at the plant he oversaw the first decommissioning at the nuclear complex. He officially retired in October 1986 on his 65th birthday.
But three years later he was back at the DFR as a consultant, using his expertise of the reactor’s operations and key components to write a new safety case for the facility.
In the 1990s and in the first years of this century he gave a new generation of engineers, including one from his home town of Chesterfield, Derbyshire, the benefit of his professional know-how of the plant’s operations.
Mr Kirk was a Fellow of both the mechanical and electrical engineers’ institutes and his knowledge was in international demand.
He regularly visited the United States Federal Government’s Argonne National
Laboratory in Idaho, where he advised on the decommissioning of the sodium-cooled EBR 2, the second Experimental Breeder Reactor, while French companies also sought his expertise.
After leaving school, Mr Kirk worked as a lighting and power systems engineer for a colliery company but in 1945 he moved to Carlisle as an engineer in the control room at a local power station.
The following year he relocated to Manchester and obtained his professional qualifications by night-school study at Manchester Technical College and by swapping shifts with colleagues for day studies. He then moved to Dounreay in 1956 and worked as a shift manager.
Away from the site he enjoyed fly-fishing, sailing and hill-walking.
In 1967, Mr Kirk, his wife Betty and daughter, Helen, moved from Thurso to a new family home at Murkle, where he worked a 10-acre croft in his spare time.
Betty died in 1997.
Mr Kirk latterly stayed in Barrock Street in Thurso.
His funeral service took place on Friday and he was cremated at Inverness Crematorium on Monday.
