§ Mr. Hector Hughesasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he will now make a statement on the recent scientific developments at Dounreay, indicating their contributions to British home industry and to exports.
§ Mr. HoggThe Atomic Energy Authority's establishment at Dounreay is primarily concerned with the development of fast reactors. The Dounreay Fast Reactor has been operating at full power since July, 1963, except for shutdown periods for refuelling and experimental purposes. It generates 60 megawatts of heat, is many times more powerful than any other fast reactor operating in the world, and is the first such reactor to supply electricity to a national supply system. Although it is only an experimental reactor, by the end of May it had supplied more than twenty-five million kilowatts of electricity to the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board. At present it is being used to test types of fuel for a possible Prototype Fast Reactor.
There is also at Dounreay a Materials Testing Reactor with associated fuel element manufacturing and chemical processing plants. It is used in general support work for the various types of reactor systems. Fuel elements have been, or are being, manufactured at Dounreay in co-operation with industry, for experimental reactors in this country and in West Germany, Denmark, Australia and India. After irradiation abroad the fuel is returned to Dounreay for chemical reprocessing.
The objective of the fast reactor development programme is to establish commercially a new type of reactor which both breeds fissile material in the process of generating heat, and also, in the first instance, burns plutonium which is a by-product of the thermal reactor systems now being installed by the C.E.G.B. The successful development of this system would therefore improve the economics of nuclear power.