Dounreay Airfield

Dounreay airfield was a World War II airfield built on the north coast of Scotland, in Caithness, for RAF Coastal Command. Having inspected the site in December 1942, it was constructed as an advance base for use in operations against occupied Norway, but was never occupied. Following the end of the war, the site became famous as the location of the world's first fast nuclear reactor.

On this page... (hide)

World War II
Cold War
Dounreay Nuclear Power Development Establishment
HMS Vulcan
Vulcan Nuclear Reactor Test Establishment
References
External links
Photographs
Aerial views
Map

World War II

Dounreay differed from the other wartime airfields in the area, RAF Wick, RAF Castletown and RAF Skitten, in that it had been planned, and was intended for use by Coastal Command, while the others had been constructed quickly in response to the needs for such facilities.

In December 1943, Coastal Command declared it would not be occupying Dounreay, and offered the airfield to Bomber Command.

Bomber Command declined the offer, stating that the airfield was unsuitable for heavy bomber operations, and had no potential for expansion. Nearby hills were also noted to be a serious hazard to flying operations.

Completed in April 1944, the airfield was immediately placed on care and maintenance, then in May 1945, was transferred to the Admiralty when the Royal Navy briefly showed some interest in the site.

Although the station remained on care and maintenance until well after the war ended and was never commissioned, it came to be known as HMS Tern II, intended to be a satellite of HMS Tern at Twatt in Orkney. Instead, the airfield was used as a dummy and for diversions.^[1]

In 2002, a report on the area described a number of remaining features from the airfield, thought to have lain in the area to the east of the old control tower. These included a brick building which contained Link Trainers (named after the inventor) which were an early form of flight simulator which could be used to teach new pilot the skills needed to fly by Instrument Flight Rules (IFR), rather than Visual Flight Rules (VFR). Another building was gas clothing store, described as the first home of the Dounreay Apprentice School, together with a number of decaying building belonging to the field's domestic facilities. Further along is a building which would have contained diesel powered generators which would have powered the site. A nearby hilltop had the remains of a radio navigation beacon which would have been used to guide aircraft back to the field.

Cold War

Although not directly involved in any war related action, the airfield was later to contribute to the country's Cold War strategy, the development of Wick airfield, and the nuclear facilities which were established at Dounreay.

The airfield remained on care and maintenance after World War II ended, a status it maintained until it was transferred to the Air Ministry in October 1954, and then into ownership by the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA).

The details of Dounreay's involvement in influencing Cold War strategy are described more fully in Dounreay - The Cold War Connection,^[2] but some of the main points are noted below:

The primary V-Bomber bases of Prestwick, Kinloss, Machrihanish, Leuchars and Lossiemouth needed secondary runways, and Dounreay was the only one available.
The V-Bombers were later able to use Wick airfield, where the runway had been extended from 4,000 feet to 6,000 feet.
By 1955, the B-52 Stratofortress had arrived, removing the need for American aircraft to refuel in Britain while en route to Moscow.
Agreement had to be reached on the removal of restrictions placed on the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), which gave control of the land to the Air Ministry, before any work could begin on the new nuclear facilities.

Once clearance was obtained, the site was able to became home to a number of nuclear development programmes, and to HMS Vulcan, the Naval Reactor Test Establishment.

The article referred to above provides an interesting definition of the Nuclear Deterrent, probably somewhat underestimated if today's revelations of the effect are to be believed, which runs as follows:

Dounreay remained one of 52 prime Soviet nuclear targets until at least 1990. To be honest, even if it had not been so, in the event of a nuclear war, few of us in Caithness would have survived. In 1980, a Russian military planner concluded that, an all-out nuclear war would result in the detonation of 14,747 nuclear devices on 1,300 Northern Hemisphere locations. Killed instantly would be 750 million people. A further 340 million wounded would have died a week later. All rainwater would become contaminated, poisoning crops and killing livestock. Famine would stalk the world, the socio-economic system would collapse, driving at least one third of all survivors mad. Within a year of the war's outbreak, 2 billion human beings would be dead, and the situation would only get worse. These statistics define the term 'nuclear deterrent'.

Dounreay Nuclear Power Development Establishment

In 1955, UKAEA established the Dounreay Nuclear Power Development Establishment on the site, set up in line with UK Government policy of the time to develop fast breeder reactor (FBR) technology. Dounreay was chosen as the reactor location for safety, being remote from major population centres in case of an explosion. The first reactor built was surrounded by a 60 metre giant steel sphere, the containment dome, still a landmark feature.

Most of the airfield and its building were demolished to make way for construction of the new facility, with a few notable exceptions. One of the three original concrete runways was retained and remained in use until the 1990s (when the Government ordered the closure of the facility in 1994), to allow air movement of parts and material for the site.

The wartime control tower was retained to became the Dounreay Visitor and Exhibition Centre, modified by the addition of a glass windowed observation to the upper level, where visitors could view the facility. On June 22, 2007, the old control tower housing the visitor centre was demolished after it had suffered severe storm and flood damage towards the end of 2006. The cost to repair the old building made the work uneconomic, and a new centre was set up in Thurso, Caithness Horizons, where the public can see exhibitions and an archive of historic material saved from the old facility.

The UKAEA operated three reactors at Dounreay, all now closed down:

The Dounreay Materials Test Reactor (DMTR) first went critical in May 1958, and closed in 1969, when testing was moved to Harwell.
The Dounreay Fast Reactor (DFR) first went critical in November 1959, producing an electrical output of 14 MW which was exported to the National Grid from October 14, 1962, until the reactor was taken offline for decommissioning in 1977. This reactor occupied the well known dome housing.
The Prototype Fast Reactor (PFR) went critical in 1974, with an output of 250 MW which was supplied to the National Grid from January 1975. The reactor was taken offline in 1994.

The first Dounreay reactor achieved criticality in 1957:

A chain reaction which provided sustained and controlled nuclear energy in Scotland was achieved for the first time 50 years ago. The experiment at Dounreay put the site in Caithness at the cutting edge of nuclear technology at the time. Half a century on, the plant is being decommissioned at a cost of �2.9bn. The chain reaction occurred at 1300 BST on 13 August, 1957. Supernoah, the name of the building where it happened, has been demolished. It is one of 99 facilities cleared from the 140 acre (56 hectare) site so far. Decommissioning is expected to be completed by 2033. The event at Dounreay was the first time a chain reaction had taken place in Scotland and meant nuclear power could be sustained and controlled. The area of Dounreay was farmland until 1954, when the government selected it as the location for the national centre for research and development of fast breeder reactors, a new type of atomic energy. Opened in 1955, it operated for 40 years. More recently, the mothballed plant has been dogged by the discoveries of rogue radioactive particles on nearby beaches linked to historic leaks at the complex.

- Dounreay achieves first Scottish chain reaction, August 13, 1957.^[3]

On April 1, 2005, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) took over ownership of the site, with the UKAEA remaining as operator. Decommissioning of the Dounreay site is planned to bring it to an interim state of care and surveillance by 2036, and as a brownfield site by 2336, at a total cost of �2.9 billion, as costed in 2005.

The total area devoted to the operation is over 1,200 acres, and the UKAEA site covers about 135 acres and employs some 1,400 people. The main occupant is AEA Technology, whose commercial activities include decommissioning, health physics, descaling of North Sea oil production pipes and the Silver II waste handling process. Other include Procord and BNFL (British Nuclear Fuels Limited). About �30 million per year goes into the local economy as wages and salaries. Dounreay represents 20% of Caithness GDP.

HMS Vulcan

HMS Vulcan was commissioned between c. 1972 and 1981, having formerly been known as the Admiralty Research Test Establishment. In 1981, the HMS prefix was dropped, and it became the Vulcan Naval Reactor Test Establishment (NRTE).

It was also known as the Royal Naval Nuclear Propulsion Test and Training Establishment, but accurate dates have not been given for this designation.

Vulcan Nuclear Reactor Test Establishment

Vulcan NRTE entrance
� Phil Williams

The Vulcan Naval Reactor Test Establishment (NRTE) is a Ministry of Defence (MoD) establishment which houses prototype nuclear propulsion plants of the type operated by the Royal Navy in its submarine fleet. The establishment is responsible for testing the prototype nuclear reactors to be used in Royal Navy submarines, and the original prototype reactor developed for use in Trident submarines remains there.

The VTOM (Vulcan Trials, Operation and Maintenance) contract ensures that Vulcan will be central to the Navy�s submarine programme until at least 2014.

Work first began on the establishment in 1957, and the first Navy reactor, Core A, went critical eight years later, in 1965. Core A, and the following version B, Z, G, and H, were built by Rolls-Royce, Derby, which has been responsible for operating the reactors since the facility was commissioned. Staff are primarily Roll-Royce workers, with some 300 working there in 2003, compared to a Royal Navy complement of five.

Each reactor type is sent to Vulcan for test prior to deployment at sea, in order to detect any problems that may exits in any design while the reactor is accessible, rather than built into an operational submarine. The age of the reactor under test is always at least two years in advance of the operational units at sea, this allows data to be gathered and fed back for prediction of actual operation, and to assist the design and development of new reactors.

The first reactor was designated Dounreay Submarine Prototype 1 (DSMP), and since it was effectively the same as fitted to operational boats, it served as a full scale training rig which could be used to train RN nuclear plant operators. Core A became depleted and burnt out by 1967, by which time a reactor simulator had been developed, and operator training was transferred to this in the same year.

The depleted Core A was removed in March 1968, the plant was overhauled, and Core B was installed. This achievement marked was the first time a a submarine reactor had been refuelled in this country. Core B went critical in June 1968, outperformed Core A, and and was finally closed down in 1972.

About this time, the establishment was commissioned as HMS Vulcan, having previously been the Admiralty Research Test Establishment.

A major refit of the DSMP in 1974 saw the installation of Core Z, which lasted for more than ten years, and is fitted to the Navy�s current fleet of hunter-killer Swiftsure and Trafalgar-class boats.

When Core Z was depleted, the DSMP was defuelled and decontaminated, and converted into a simulator by replacing the reactor with a powerful electric heater. This allowed the temperature and pressure of a reactor powered system to be replicated up to the point of shut-down. The DSMP was renamed LAIRD (Loss of coolant Accident Investigation Rig Dounreay). LAIRD allowed the most difficult accident conditions to be simulated using real systems, and more than 250 trials over 5 years proved that the Rolls-Royce engineering could cope with a series of simulated conditions, including coolant loss.

The old DSMP was replaced by the Shore Test Facility (STF).

Core H, the latest reactor as of 2003, is installed in the STF and being trialled successfully in advance of installation.

While the primary business of Vulcan is the testing of submarine reactors, it also ensures that all operating procedures are current and are maintained with the tight safety parameters which apply to the operation of such equipment. The STF allows operating procedures to be trialled in the same way as the reactors, to ensure changes and updates have been correctly incorporated.

The facility also dismantles and examines the burnt out reactor cores, checking them against predicted operating parameters and providing feedback to the engineers and designers working on the next generation of reactors.^[4]