The above, which I missed 15 years ago, popped up in social media recently to shock me with the candour of the headline. More on it below, after this.

Last October 2025 we had:

Inspectors raise Scottish nuclear plant with excess child leukaemia risk to an ‘enhanced level of regulatory attention for safety because of unsatisfactory site performance across numerous areas’ with 300 years to go until it’s ‘safe’

From the Chief Nuclear Inspector’s annual report on Great Britain’s nuclear industry October 2025, page 28:

In July 2024, we increased NRS Dounreay to an enhanced level of regulatory attention for safety because of unsatisfactory site performance across numerous areas: the current condition of a number of site assets (such as buildings, electrical systems, steam systems); management and compliance with various aspects of conventional health & safety legislation (such as COMAH and DSEAR); the level of management & organisational change affecting safety culture.

https://www.onr.org.uk/publications/regulatory-reports/chief-nuclear-inspectors-annual-reports/202425

Decommissioning of Dounreay began in 2019 and the plan envisages 50-60 years to complete but ‘complete’ doesn’t mean to the company, Magnox Ltd., what it means to most of us and the site will be under surveillance, i.e. not usable, for at least another 300 years or 110 000 days[i].

However, according to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, one of the most dangerous elements, left on the soil, Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24 000 years.[ii]

How much will the decommissioning cost? According to World Nuclear News in 2019, £400 million,[iii] but 5 years later, according to the Northern Times in April 2024, £7.9 billion![iv]

Researchers based at Oxford University, reporting conveniently for some political forces, in July 2014, revisited earlier studies of the incidence of leukaemia around Sellafield and Dounreay and concluded that children, teenagers and young adults currently living close to Sellafield and Dounreay were not at an increased risk of developing cancers. 

The researchers, dependent upon UK Government grants for their survival, notably downplayed two earlier studies finding a raised risk of leukaemia among 0–14 and 15-24 year-olds, living within 12.5 km of Dounreay during the period 1979–1984[i] and in a subsequent study in 1996, reported an excess of childhood leukaemia and Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma (NHL) within 25 km of Dounreay for the period 1968–1993.[ii]

The researchers do not tell us just how many cases, how many more children and young adults than expected, had developed these often-deadly cancers, but 1 287 cases near seven nuclear sites in Scotland were looked at in the second study. Around Dounreay, almost twice as many cases as expected were found. The difference was greatest around Dounreay but even if we share the 1 287 between the seven sites, we get around 180 cases near Dounreay, of which half or 90, might not have occurred if the plant had never been built. To, me that’s ‘significant’ and I feel sure it was for them and their families.

With every passing month, it becomes clearer that Scottish Labour must reconsider its plans for a nuclear Scotland.

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[i] Heasman MA, Kemp IW, Urquhart JD, Black R. Childhood leukaemia in northern Scotland. Lancet. 1986;327 (8475:266.

[ii] Sharp L, Black RJ, Harkness EF, McKinney PA. Incidence of childhood leukaemia and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in the vicinity of nuclear sites in Scotland, 1968–93. Occup Environ Med. 1996;53 (12:823–831.

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[i] https://www.neimagazine.com/features/featuredounreay-site-restoration-plan/

[ii] https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/radwaste.html

[iii] https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Dounreay-decommissioning-framework-contracts-award

[iv] https://www.northern-times.co.uk/news/new-end-date-at-dounreay-will-mean-a-spend-of-7-9bn-347604/

Our 300 hundred year figure now pales with the recovery of this 15 year old Guardian report:

Radioactive contamination that leaked for more than two decades from the Dounreay nuclear plant on the north coast of Scotland will never be completely cleaned up, a Scottish government agency has admitted.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) has decided to give up on its aim of returning the seabed near the plant to a “pristine condition”. To do so, it said, could cause “more harm than good”.

At a board meeting in Stirling on Tuesday, the Scottish government’s environmental watchdog opted to encourage remediation “as far as is practically achievable” but to abandon any hope of removing all the radioactive pollution from the seabed.

Tens of thousands of radioactive fuel fragments escaped from the Dounreay plant between 1963 and 1984, polluting local beaches, the coastline and the seabed. Fishing has been banned within a two-kilometre radius of the plant since 1997.

The most radioactive of the particles are regarded by experts as potentially lethal if ingested. Similar in size to grains of sand, they contain caesium-137, which has a half-life of 30 years, but they can also incorporate traces of plutonium-239, which has a half-life of over 24,000 years – meaning that is the time period for half of the material to break down.

Full text at: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/sep/21/scottish-nuclear-leak-clean-up