Qualla: Dounreay

Dounreay: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jonathan Russell, CC BY-SA 2.0. The sphere is 42 metres across, painted white, and visible from kilometres out at sea. It sits at the edge of the North Atlantic on the Caithness coast, 9 miles west of Thurso, and it once housed the Dounreay Fast Reactor - the first fast breeder reactor in the world to send electricity to a national grid. It looks exactly like what a science fiction writer in 1955 would have drawn for the cover of a magazine: a giant smooth ball squatting on a heather moor at the top of Britain, glowing slightly against the cold light. The reactor inside has been cold since 1977. The sphere remains, because the alternative - dismantling it - is harder than leaving it standing while the rest of the site is taken apart around it.

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Image: Jonathan Russell | CC BY-SA 2.0

Dounreay: Why Here

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dave Napier, CC BY-SA 2.0. Caithness in 1955 was the right kind of place to put an experimental nuclear reactor: remote enough that no one would be near it if something went wrong, served by a railway and a harbour for moving materials, and with a small population that needed work. The Nuclear Power Develo...

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Image: Dave Napier | CC BY-SA 2.0

Dounreay: The Fast Breeder Dream

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stanley Howe, CC BY-SA 2.0. A fast breeder reactor is not just a power station. It is, in theory, a power station that produces more fuel than it consumes - turning non-fissile uranium-238 into fissile plutonium-239 as a side effect of generating heat. In an age when uranium was thought to be scarce, breede...

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Image: Stanley Howe | CC BY-SA 2.0

Dounreay: The Shaft

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit steve glasper, CC BY-SA 2.0. Dounreay's hardest legacy is a 65-metre vertical shaft. It was originally dug as part of a tunnel for the sea discharge pipe; afterwards, with the tunnel finished, it was simply convenient to drop intermediate-level nuclear waste into the empty shaft, and so this is what was done...

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Image: steve glasper | CC BY-SA 2.0

Dounreay: Decommissioning in Centuries

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Geni, CC BY-SA 4.0. All five reactors at Dounreay are shut down. The site is now operated as NRS Dounreay - Nuclear Restoration Services Dounreay - having passed through several corporate restructurings since the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority took ownership in April 2005. The current schedule br...

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Image: Geni | CC BY-SA 4.0