Save the Dounreay Dome.

[John Little]

And lo - it came to pass that the big boss had a vague idea.

'It should be a big steel ball' he said. I have no idea how to build such, for I am not an engineer. Find me an engineering company and bounce it off them'.

So his minions did a few vague sketches, for they had never built such a thing - no-one on the planet had. Then they looked in yellow pages and found a firm in Motherwell and rang them up.

'Can we come and see you?' they said.

'Sure!' they said.

When the minions got there and showed their sketches there was much sucking of teeth.
'Aye - well that's a new one' said the Scots- 'No-one's ever done that sort of thing before. Well we'll give it a go.'

And they put their designers and their engineers together who were men of quiet genius and quite unsung.

And designed and engineered and built the first great steel dome in the entire wide world.

.....................................

Into the Dome the big boss put a nuclear reactor. It was a notable reactor and did a lot of good work, pulling off a notable first.

But, as such things do, it ran its span of life and had to be cleared out.

And nuclear became unpopular, like unto the Death eaters in Harry Potter.
And radiation and the sniff thereof did stink in the nostrils of the populace and of the men of power.

And the dome fell into the hands of men who saw it not.

All they could see was the reactor and the fears and dislikes of the populace.

They saw not an unparalleled feat of engineering and design genius, the prototype of all its kind.

They saw an empty shell, not an answer to a challenge or an inspired and unique building, the product of Scotland's second industrial revolution, designed by Scots and built by Scots.

So they wrote a report on it which concentrated on the area round it, and on the reactor. And condemned it.
...............................................

Ignore the reactor. It's irrelevant.

See the building.

[scotsboy]

I wonder where they got their inspiration?

http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/arie...l-bubble-twist

[John Little]

I wonder if Tim Smit would be interested in Dounreay?



I wonder if anybody even asked about possible futures? It's by no means clear in that report.

[John Little]

In France of course they take their Dome, clean it up and turn it into a nuclear museum.
And theirs wasn't even the first in the world.






Dounreay was.

[John Little]

"...by late autumn of 1955 a giant ‘bowl’ had taken shape as the skilled platers and welders of Motherwell Bridge & Engineering Co Ltd completed the bottom half of the sphere, which contained the shielding. Another Lanarkshire firm, Alexander Findlay & Co Ltd., were erecting the internal structural steelwork..."

[John Little]

Alexander Findlay & Co. made structural steelwork; stanchions, girders, beams and columns, the skeletons of buildings, support frames for overhead cranes and pressure vessels. They supplied and erected over 5,000 tons of steelwork for the Dounreay site, including the labyrinth of girders around which the Fast Reactor sphere was built. This sphere, one of the great symbols of the Nuclear Age, had a surface area of 1½ acres, weighed 1,500 tons and contained over two miles of welds, every one of which was radiographically inspected. With a diameter of 135 feet, as well as being the largest sphere in Europe, the Dounreay dome was three times the size of any similar vessel built in Britain before that date. And it was air-tight, too. Motherwell Bridge were chosen to fabricate and erect this famous structure. It was seen by them as both an engineering challenge, and a commercial opportunity, the Dounreay project being perceived as the father of an extensive family of fast breeder reactors to be built in the near future.

The men from Motherwell arrived at Dounreay in July 1955, Motherwell Bridge moving into a specially equipped workshop in one of the large airfield hangars, where many of the steel plates for the sphere were to be formed and welded together by an automatic process, designed to reduce the effects of the frequently inclement Caithness weather. A dedicated electricity supply powered by portable diesel generators was imported to cope with the heavy demands of welding plant, the Hydro Board's supply lines being notoriously failure prone at that time. Certain heavy and specialised fabrication work was carried out at Motherwell prior to being transported to Dounreay by road and sea, the first to arrive being the largest single section of the sphere's lower half. This had to travel as deck cargo, there being no crane large enough at Scrabster harbour to unload it. Jack Forrest, Motherwell Bridge's site erection manager, was much relieved when this giant load was safely secured on the low-loader which was to take it on to Dounreay, an operation involving waiting for low tide when, the ship's deck being level with the low-loader, skids and skilfully orchestrated brute force were used to lever the load ashore.

Time was an important factor in the construction of the Dounreay site. Schedules were tight, often to the very limits of what was humanly possible, the weather playing no small part in the forward planning. The Fast Reactor sphere required to be built in two stages; the lower half between July and December, 1955 and the top half in the corresponding months of 1956. Internal construction work was carried out between January and June, 1956. Windless days in Caithness are few, but in summer the daylight hours are long. Welders and steel erectors often worked on beyond midnight, perched precariously on staging high up in the night air, or lying horizontal in cramped spaces, sweating, cursing, hammering away, forcing the great project forward.



Built by giants. I am lost in admiration.

What an achievement. What a building! What endeavour!

"Above it flew the Scottish Saltire, a fitting tribute to the Lanarkshire firms, Motherwell Bridge and Findlays, who had built it."

[John Little]

Looks accessible to me...





"Although most of the Dounreay site is free from significant levels of radiological contamination, some contamination exists on the site due to historical practices and legacies. Surveys have identified these areas, locations have been recorded and discrete spots of surface contamination have been removed."
2006


The historical importance of the Dounreay Fast Reactor (DFR) sphere has led to the structure being considered as worthy of retention as a possible listed building.

Readers will please note that it the sphere itself that was being considered as worthy in 2006. Yet by 2010 it has been decided that it would just be an 'empty shell' in the Atkins Heritage report.

[John Little]

"At present, the Council's preferred site end use is for the area to be redeveloped as a business/ industrial park or science and technology business centre. The Council will review potential options for the re-use of the site with the site licence company, other regulators, and local public and stakeholder groups, once the need for facilities associated with decommissioning becomes more apparent." 2006

What changed?

Was it because someone told them that the site was polluted and could not be used?

Well they'd better shut the gates now then!

[John Little]

"The main entrance is a giant airlock door and the exit a radiation screening chamber. The lobby is dominated by a red crane, and the place one would expect to find the bar is a control room filled with panels of multi-coloured flashing buttons, diodes and meters.

Everywhere there are valves, ventilation ducts and oxygen monitoring systems and in the middle — where any self-respecting holidaymaker would expect to find the pool — is a nuclear reactor.

It may not quite be ready, but if you are already thinking of booking your summer holiday for 2030 you could do a lot worse than stay in the former Dounreay Fast Reactor (DFR) on the northern Scottish coast.

Provided some windows are built, it will boast breathtaking views across the Pentland Firth to Orkney. So long as the “Danger of Death” signs have been replaced with something more welcoming and the 20ft-high electric fences torn down, it could be a thoroughly agreeable place to while away a week with the wife and kids.

For novelty factor alone, a stay at Fallouty Towers — as it has been dubbed by the Scottish Sun — will almost certainly be unrivalled.

It may sound like something straight out of a science-fiction fantasy, but the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) said last week that it had drawn up a list of possible future uses for the sphere-shaped building that has become one of industrial Britain’s most recognisable landmarks.

As part of the process of decommissioning the Dounreay complex and returning it to a brownfield site, it is considering whether to save the famous DFR — dubbed the “Golf Ball” by locals — and preserve it for future generations. Possible options, according to the authority, include turning it into a hotel or nightclub, a conference centre, a space observatory, a nuclear museum or a leisure centre. Although demolition is still a strong possibility, a fuller range of options will be drawn up in the spring, when industrial archaeologists will examine the issue in greater depth."


Not in enough depth!

[John Little]

"However, James Gunn, a senior technical officer at UKAEA and project manager for the site’s “heritage strategy”, insisted that the idea of converting the DFR into a hotel was feasible. “All you have to do is look at the sorts of things that are being built in Dubai to see that this sort of thing is not impossible. It would be a totally unique experience,” he said."

[John Little]

"The atomic age had arrived in Scotland, the experimental Dounreay Fast Reactor (DFR) had reached criticality, demonstrating that it was an active means of producing energy.

Its scientists and engineers had stolen the lead in the global development of nuclear power.

The design committee for a British fast reactor was set up in 1951 and its vision had become a reality eight years later. Drawing a parallel with President Kennedy's ambition in 1961 to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade, Mike Brown, decommissioning manager at DFR, said what was achieved in Caithness was comparable.

"What Britain did in the 1950s was every bit as impressive, if not more so, than what Nasa did in the 1960s. This was Britain's man-on-the-moon moment, if not better. From the creation of a design committee in 1951, Britain had delivered a working fast reactor by the end of the decade, without the full facts in their possession. That knowledge only came with the experimentation.



"Putting a man on the moon was the next step in a rocket programme that was already into space. Designing, building and operating a fast reactor from scratch, at a time when the knowledge was scarce, I believe was an even bigger accomplishment."

Half a century on and attention is again focused on the iconic, sphere-shaped building as efforts continue on what the pioneering workers, revered for their skills and ingenuity in building and fitting out the reactor gave little thought to: that it may eventually have to be knocked down."

So the sphere has little value and would be left as a 'shell' eh?


I wonder what bogeyman scared everyone off looking at uses for it and finding funding for it?

[John Little]

“There were suggestions in the past that buildings like D8550 could never be decontaminated safely. This decommissioning project team has shown that even the most radiologically contaminated areas can now be decommissioned safely and efficiently.”
Charlie Fowler, Dounreay
http://www.sdi.co.uk/Export/Find-New...statement.ashx

[John Little]

"The question of what else should be kept is now in the hands of consultant Atkins, which has been awarded an £88,000 contract to prepare a heritage strategy for the site.

Its project, which will run until November, will look at the impact Dounreay has had in a local, national and international context, and will include ideas on how to preserve facilities and artefacts of potential historical significance.

Atkins has also been asked to consider options for the landmark Dounreay Fast Reactor (DFR), the golf ball-shaped dome. Last year, a number of ideas were put forward for the future of the sphere, including a hotel, museum and recreational centre, as well as demolition.

It has been estimated that knocking down the DFR after a clear-out of radioactive and chemical contamination would cost £13.7 million. Retaining and maintaining it over the next decade would cost £10.1 million, but the sphere support structure and adjacent buildings would need replacing after ten years, at a total cost of up to £35 million."

£88,000 for that! I'd have done it for a couple of thou!

Shall we- can we, please come clean?

It's not about radiation, contamination or access.

That is, in fact, complete drivel.

If it's about money then try selling the thing off.

If it's about painting it then give it a lick of paint every few years - it won't cost as much as you think.

But in the end - it's about cash. And where are all these figures coming from anyway. They are not in the report! Don't you owe the sphere a few itemised bills of expenditure> Or are they just fished out of the aether?

It's about cash.

And nobody has actually said that.


You - yes YOU - could just offer it free to bidding entrepreneurs......

[John Little]

If I were in charge of something big and I wanted to do something big, but I did not want it to sound bad, then I would find plausible sounding reasons for it that would obscure my baser ones.


I would hire an expensive sounding firm to produce a big thick report.

That report would sling all sorts of mud about and reach conclusions which I would then release to the media.

This would implant in the popular consciousness the thought that what I was doing is completely unavoidable. And if all the newspapers and the radio and the television and the magazines said it, then what was in the report would assume the dignity and weight of truth.

It would in fact have the appearance of inassailable truth.

But underneath - would all be havers.


And anyone who disagreed with it- well what would they do about it?


That's what I would do.

It's called 'Propaganda'.

[John Little]

You are right. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.

Everyone is either asleep about it or does not care.

I have hammered this thread as far as it will go.

When I have something new to say, I will.
In a new thread.


The Atkins Heritage report is an exercise in hot air.

For now, thread closed.