nuclear-news

Dounreay workers among 200 allowed to leave Nuclear Restoration Services’ UK in early exit scheme

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 By Iain Grant, John O’Groat Journal 10th Feb 2026

About 30 workers at Dounreay are believed to have been offered early leaving terms in a scheme designed to trim the size of Nuclear Restoration Services’ UK-wide workforce.

Many others at the Caithness site who applied for the mutually agreed voluntary exit (MAVE) initiative were unsuccessful.

The scheme, which has raised the hackles of unions, offers one month of salary per year of service, capped at 21 months of pay or £95,000.

No numbers for Dounreay have been made available but about 500 applied at NRS’s 14 sites throughout the country. Of those, about 200 have been made offers.

It is part of a wider Treasury drive to cut the public sector payroll following its growth during the pandemic.

About 1200 are employed by NRS at Dounreay though that will increase by more than 300 when plans to put NRS in charge of the neighbouring MoD plant at Vulcan come to pass.

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The MAVE scheme is opposed by Prospect, which along with GMB and Unite, is running a What a Waste campaign, to highlight the loss of scarce, skilled specialists in the nuclear sector.

They claim the job cuts will cost the government more in the long term as it will put a spoke in the programme to decommission redundant nuclear sites and mean it has to fork out to rebuild the workforce in the future……………………..

In addition to Dounreay, NRS runs nuclear sites at Berkley, Bradwell, Chapelcross, Dungeness, Harwell, Hinkley Point, Hunterston, Oldbury, Sizewell, Trawsfynydd, Winfrith and Wyfla and the Maentwrog hydro-electric plant. https://www.johnogroat-journal.co.uk/news/dounreay-workers-among-200-allowed-to-leave-nrs-in-early-exi-426869/

 

February 15, 2026 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | employment, UK