Family Day at Dounreay

Recently there was a Family Day at Dounreay. 

Dounreay is the nuclear reactor site here in Scotland and is where Mike has been working for this past 15 months. It is the reason we came to Scotland.  (And by the way - he was extended to complete another task, which means we will be home in December.)

“Family Day” means that the site was opened up to allow for friends and family members to walk around the site in the company of an employee. We all had to be accompanied because Dounreay is a highly secured area.  It is heavily guarded. Men with automatic weapons are posted at the gates. Highly trained dogs patrol the perimeter and barbed wires cover the tops of fences. People going in and out must have security clearance and they must enter a pass code and scan their badges to get through the gates to actually enter the property. This is not a place one can just wander into. To get pictures of the place, you must park in the lot that is a quarter mile away or stand on the beach across the bay and use a zoom lens. 

Dounreay - as seen from the parking lot

And because it is such a secure area, cameras are not allowed. Pictures are not allowed. So, the pictures I have are photos of an informational brochure I picked up.

This is the sort of environment Mike has always worked in.

 I loved having the opportunity to visit Dounreay because in the 33 years we have been married, I have had very limited opportunities to visit Mike’s place of work. He has always worked in nuclear power, which means his work site has always had restricted access.

When we were first married, Mike was already in the navy. He let me know early on that there was very little he could tell me about his work. “Loose lips sink ships” kind of thing. And “I could tell you, but I’d have to shoot you in the morning” kind of thing.  (Yes, I actually hear that one from him a LOT – LOL!) So, I learned right away that Mike didn’t/couldn’t talk about his work or exactly where the ship would be or exactly when it would pull into port. 

But I am a very visual person.  So, without information, I had no picture. I had to make my own mental picture with whatever little information he could give me. That can be interesting.

When we were married, Mike was stationed on the USS Enterprise out of Alameda, CA (across from San Francisco). That summer the Enterprise had a Family Day. That meant that friends and family members were able to board the ship for the day. The ship left the pier, passed under the Golden Gate Bridge and went several miles out to sea. They let us climb up and down the ladders and walk all over the ship. They even let us be on the deck while jets took off from it and did touch-and-go landings. It was very exciting. But the very best part was when Mike snuck me into the berthing area (that’s not a misspelling - that was in the day before women were allowed on ships). The berthing area is the place where they slept. Berths are like bunk beds, only smaller. Each one had a curtain that could be drawn across for privacy, but it literally was about the size of a coffin- he could not have sat up inside it, for sure.   He lifted up his mattress and showed me the minute space in which he had to keep his personals. Talk about minimalism. And he showed me the shower/toilet area. Also interesting.

Now, I was not allowed to go down to where he actually worked, which would have been the reactor spaces. That was still a very secure space, but I was thrilled to be able to visualize where he slept.

constructing Dounreay Fast Reactor

When we had been married for 6 years, Mike was assigned to the USS Long Beach, stationed out of San Diego, CA. That was another time I was able to go aboard. When he had duty - which meant he went to work one day, stayed all night and came home at the end of the next work day – I would drive to the pier and have supper with him in the Chief’s mess.

The only other time I have ever been to where Mike worked was in Richland, when Mike worked for Washington Closure, where for a couple of years, he worked in an office building at the edge of town. On a couple of occasions, I was able to visit his office and see his desk and the plant that was becoming a jungle in his office, and the fabulous view from out his window.

He worked for Naval Reactors at the Newport News Shipyard for 7 years and I never saw any part of his work.

That’s it. The rest has been left to my imagination. He worked at the Hanford site for 19 years and when people would ask me which area he worked, I really couldn’t tell them. There was a big blank in my mind’s eye.  I have never been on-site, so I have no actual experience to base my mental picture on for how the site looks. People talk about different areas or buildings out there and they mean nothing to me. They are just numbers (and if you know me, you know numbers are not my strength).

So, being able to visit the Dounreay site was exciting for me. Not that it is a really exciting place, you understand, but exciting for me because I got to see Mike’s desk - so nice and tidy.  Yeah, I’m sure that’s normal.   While I did not actually get to go inside any of the reactors, I did get to see conference rooms where he has meetings. (Hey, I will take whatever I can get) Being able to be in the same spaces where he spends so much of his time was a great pleasure.

Mike’s input -

As stated, Jodi and I were able to visit two of the reactor facilities.  Dounreay had set up a visitor’s room in each and had several props and literature tables out to give visitors a snapshot of life at these facilities.  The first was the Prototype Fast Reactor (PFR) where we were able to see scale models of the facility, reactor plant, the reactor core, and a mockup of a fuel rod. 

While it was very intriguing to me and I enjoyed the dialogue with the presenter, Jodi took it all in with a smile.  She was quite impressed with the knowledge some of the folks had, especially one young intern that was bringing around his family and providing them his insight and perspective. 

PFR (Prototype Fast Reactor) was the proof-of-concept full-scale plant for breeder fuels.  The test bed was the Dounreay Fast Reactor, a roughly 1/10 scale version of PFR.  This was the proving ground where much of the learning occurred leading to the successful design/build of PFR. 

DFR (Dounreay Fast Reactor) is the iconic Dome that is associated with Dounreay – The Dome was a physics answer to dealing with high energy events at the time that was quickly replaced with different containment techniques.  There are only a few of these dome containments around and they stand out against any horizon or backdrop.

A pretty cool structure when you think about how it was fabricated.

Back to Jodi –

What follows are snapshots I took of the leaflet I picked up at Dounreay. If you like technical stuff and/or are just interested in knowing more about Dounreay, read on keep scrolling for the pictures that follow. 😊