Global Climate Change Action

Robots scour sea for atomic waste

Submarines search for radioactive material dumped off the Scottish coast in the 1980s
full story: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/may/25/pollution.conservation

snips…(bolding mine)

Although the UKAEA kept no precise accounts for building and running Dounreay, it is known to have cost several billion pounds.

“We built the first fast breeder reactor to generate electricity for a national grid”.
For 40 years, test reactors – part of Britain’s fast breeder reactor construction programme – operated there but the technology turned out to be messy. Fast breeders use liquid metal coolants and their contaminated remnants still await removal. “At the time, engineers were only interested in building reactors. No one thought how we might dismantle them,”

The UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), owners of Dounreay, was eventually fined 140,000 pounds at Wick Sheriff Court last year for ‘very grave errors’ that led to the beach’s contamination. The authority’s safety director, Dr John Crofts, admitted the release represented “an unacceptable legacy.”

Two kilometres of beach outside the Dounreay nuclear plant have been closed since 1983, and fishing banned, when it was found old fuel rod fragments were being accidentally pumped into the sea.