nuclear-news

Major leak at Highland nuclear site triggers hunt for mystery bunkers

 A 1960s bunker at a Highland nuclear site quietly leaked radioactive water
for at least a year before the alarm was raised – and officials have now
ordered a hunt for other similar hidden structures that may be leaking too,
the Sunday National can reveal.

Dounreay, on the Caithness coast, was the
UK’s centre for experimental fast‑reactor research from the 1950s until
the 1990s and is now a major nuclear decommissioning site. The clean‑up
is funded by the UK Government’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and
carried out locally by Nuclear Restoration Services (NRS), which runs the
site and is responsible for managing its ageing reactors, waste pits and
other legacy facilities.

The National revealed last year that radioactive
material had been accidentally released at Dounreay between July 2023 and
August 2024 and that Scotland’s environmental watchdog, SEPA, found the
operator had breached its permit.

But now, a new internal investigation
report, released to the Sunday National under freedom of information, goes
further: it warns that other underground structures with “unrevealed
hazards” may still be waiting to be found. The original leak source was a
disused underground carbon bed filter – essentially a concrete bunker –
built in the early 1960s as part of a ventilation system for one of
Dounreay’s facilities. It was taken out of normal use decades ago and
left as a legacy structure to be dealt with during decommissioning.

The report notes that it “was never designed to retain water”, yet by 2017,
it was known to contain thousands of litres of radioactive liquor and had
already been identified as a possible source of contamination at one of the
site’s outfalls.

A spokesperson for the Scottish Environment Protection
Agency (SEPA) said: “In June 2024, Nuclear Restoration Services Ltd (NRS)
notified SEPA of a potential leak of radioactively contaminated water from
a carbon bed filter on the Dounreay site. It was subsequently established
that there was a small leak from the carbon bed filter. Monitoring by the
operator has not detected any increase in radioactivity in groundwater
downstream.

“SEPA’s investigation concluded that the operator had
breached conditions of its Environmental Authorisations (Scotland)
Regulations 2018 (EASR) authorisation. To secure compliance, we have issued
a Regulatory Notice requiring NRS to take specified steps, including
reviewing groundwater monitoring arrangements and undertaking
characterisation to establish the extent of contamination which has arisen
from the leak from the carbon bed filter.”

 The National 15th Feb 2026, https://www.thenational.scot/news/25854472.major-leak-highland-nuclear-site-triggers-hunt-mystery-bunkers/

February 19, 2026 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, UK