Preferred bidder named for Scottish nuclear site

Babcock Dounreay Partnership (BDP) has been named as preferred bidder in Scotland's largest nuclear clean-up and demolition project.

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) said BDP would take ownership through share transfer of DSRL, the company that manages the decommissioning and clean-up of the Dounreay site.

BDP is a specially created private sector consortium comprising Babcock Nuclear Services, CH2M Hill and URS Holdings.

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Funding for the site was set at £150m a year in the Government Spending Review of 2010.

The proposed date for closure was originally set at 2063 but has been moving forward over the last decade to 2038.

Bidders had to show they could accelerate the current 2038 closure date by at least six years while reducing costs by at least £500 million.

Tony Fountain, chief executive of the NDA - the public body responsible for the decommissioning and clean-up of the UK's civil public nuclear sites - said the Babcock Dounreay Partnership brought a successful track record and extensive nuclear experience "that will bring enormous benefits to the decommissioning and clean-up programme".

From 1955-1994, Dounreay was the UK's centre for fast reactor research and development, and is now Scotland's largest nuclear clean-up and demolition project.

The NDA said research at Dounreay, carried out by some of the nation's leading scientists and engineers, had given the UK the knowledge to generate electricity using a more advanced type of reactor, the 'fast breeder'. T

"The experimental nature of these now-redundant facilities poses some complex decommissioning challenges, requiring real technological innovation in order to complete safe decommissioning," the NDA said.

John Thurso, MP for Caithness Sutherland and Easter Ross, said that since its inception Dounreay had been a world leading centre of technological innovation and that innovation and skill would continue to be required through the decommissioning process.