More than one in ten jobs is to be cut at a nuclear complex in the north of Scotland, managers at the site have confirmed. Unions said that the cuts announced at Dounreay in Caithness were deeper than they had feared after plans to reduce the workforce by about 200 posts were announced. Workers were told yesterday that the jobs will go over the next year. Three quarters of the positions lost will be staff directly employed by Dounreay Site Restoration Limited, which is responsible for cleaning up the area. The remainder of the job losses will be among agency and contract workers. Once playing a pioneering role in the UK’s civil nuclear industry, Dounreay housed Scotland’s first successful reactor in 1958. The site is being decommissioned, with work expected to continue until the 2030s on the highly complex project. Site managers said that redundancies were an inevitable consequence of progress being made on decommissioning. Phil Craig, the managing director of Dounreay, said millions had been invested over the past decade to create new jobs in the Caithness and North Sutherland area and that the site, workers and the local community had planned for reductions. He also rejected claims that the news would put safety at risk by damaging morale, which is already said to be low.
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