Military nuclear site to transfer to civilian firm

The responsibility for decommissioning a nuclear submarine reactor test site in the Highlands is being transferred from the military to a civilian company.

The Vulcan Naval Reactor Test Establishment (NRTE) at Dounreay nuclear power complex, near Thurso, was built in the 1950s and supports about 280 jobs.

It was used for prototype testing of nuclear propulsion plants for more than 50 years, before the last reactor was shut down in 2015.

The transfer of Vulcan to Nuclear Restoration Services (NRS) would allow the MoD to focus its resources on national defence, according to a new report.

NRS is in the process of taking over the Ministry of Defence (MoD) site as part of its work decommissioning and demolishing Dounreay.

NRS is a subsidiary of UK government agency, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA).

The new report forms part of a draft strategy the NDA has published on waste disposal work at UK nuclear power sites, and has started a public consultation on.

All radioactive fuel could be removed from Vulcan by the late 2020s and work to decommission and demolish site could then begin.

Vulcan's workforce includes employees from contractor Rolls-Royce Submarines and the MoD.

The site provided data for seven different classes of Royal Navy submarines, including Trafalgar, Vanguard and Astute.

In 2014, it was revealed there had been a "microscopic" radiative breach at Vulcan two years earlier.

The statement confirming the incident by then defence secretary Philip Hammond sparked a political row.

The Scottish government criticised the UK government for not alerting it to the incident at the time it had happened in 2012.

The wider Dounreay site is one of the biggest employers in the Highlands.

It employs 1,354 people - 96% of them living in Caithness and north Sutherland - according to the latest Dounreay Socio Economic Report.

The NDA's draft strategy said all buildings across the Dounreay site could be demolished, or put to another use, by 2078.