'Hazardous' waste from Dounreay ended up in landfill, report states
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A probe is under way into how a batch of non-radioactive, hazardous waste from Dounreay ended up in the landfill site at Seater.
The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) is investigating how the waste came to be at the site, and is requiring action to prevent a recurrence.
The episode is revealed in Sepa's latest quarterly report to Dounreay Stakeholder Group, which acts as a local watchdog.
It states: "On March 20, Sepa were advised that four bags of hazardous clinical waste were mistakenly uplifted and taken to Seater for disposal on March 17.
"This was discovered (at Dounreay) on March 20 when hazardous waste was due to be collected but was no longer in its bin for collection."
Sepa's Dounreay-based officer Stewart Ballantine said the site licence holders Magnox Ltd have clarified the type of material which was involved.
Though referred to as hazardous clinical waste, the company claim this is "a precautionary over-classification".
Magnox has informed Sepa that the bags contained "secondary wastes associated with routine environmental monitoring".
Mr Ballantine said by the time the error was discovered, the bags could not be retrieved as the disposal area at the Bower dump had been capped over.
He said an investigation report has been submitted to Sepa with a number of follow-up actions due to have been completed by the end of April.
Former Caithness Highland councillor Gillian Coghill, who chairs DSG's site restoration sub-group, said: "This is an ongoing investigation which Sepa are working on and we're waiting to hear back from them.
"I think it is down to human error but it is something that needs to be investigated so it will hopefully never happen again."
Magnox Ltd took over the Dounreay nuclear site licence from DSRL at the start of last month.
On March 16 Sepa carried out an inspection of Dounreay's waste management licence and gave it a clean bill of health.
Magnox has been asked to comment.
