Consolidated approach

has won a £13m contract from Dounreay Site Restoration (

) to provide maintenance and operations services in support of decommissioning the site’s two fast reactors.

The 'open book ' contract is expected to run for three years, with an option to extend by up to two years.

Until now, four different companies have provided maintenance and operations support at the reactors.

The appointment of BNS will bring together under one management the work previously done by the four companies.

Brad Smith, DSRL's site project manager, said: ‘Even though our reactors are of different designs, there is a great deal of commonality about the decommissioning approach needed for liquid, alkali-metal-cooled, fast reactors.

‘This contract should act as a pilot study to show we can take advantage of this.’

‘As we move towards combining work on our two reactors, rather than having separate teams for each, it makes sense to combine the old contracts,’ said Mike Brown, DSRL's fast reactors decommissioning manager. ‘If BNS is able to deliver the efficiencies we expect, then this business model could be adopted for wider business integration.’