Warning of threat to local population after discharged radioactive particle from Scottish nuclear power station found

Dounreay (Scottish Gaelic: Dùnrath) is on the north coast of Caithness, in the Highland area of Scotland and west of the town of Thurso. Since the 1950s it has been the site of two nuclear establishments. Used for the development of prototype fast breeder reactors and submarine reactor testing. Most of these facilities are now being decommissioned. In a report in the Scottish regional newspaper the Press and Journal: "A leading independent nuclear expert has called for increased monitoring of a Caithness beach after an “alarming” radioactive fragment was found."

This follows the discovery of a radioactive particle which contained radioactive americium washed up on Sandside beach, near Reay. The warning came from world nuclear expert Dr John Large, who advises governments around the world and oversaw the salvage of Russian nuclear sub Kursk in 2000. Although the particle was probably discharged into the sea decades ago, he said that : “The trouble is that 20 or 30 or so years later it has turned up on a beach. If it reaches the surface – which is quite possible given natural disturbance by the tide etc – and gets dried out it can become airborne, thus threatening local communities. It is alarming.

“Of course it is serious. There’s not a lot you can do either – because finding these particles is a random process, you cannot predict where they are.

“Monitoring needs to be stepped up because there is a real risk these particles could end up in areas of population.”

Fragments of irradiated nuclear fuel were flushed into the sea from Dounreay in the 1960s and 1970s. Particles of which were first detected on the Dounreay site coastal strip in 1983 and on the beach at Sandside in 1984. Attempts to recover some particles from the seabed was done between the 1990s and 2012