Next week, MPs will join them, concerned about seeurity. So is Dr Nelson. Tbis week he admitted to The Independent that a 1m electrified fence had to be installed around key areas of complex last year, after mock terrorists broke in during a security exercise. The new fence, he claimed, would slow infiltrators down until the police could get there and deal with it. Perhaps most alarming, is the discovery of some radioaetive particles as big as grains of sand on the beach and in the sea near Dounreay.
Analysis shows that which means something, somewhere, is leaking.
Outsiders accuse Dounreay of excessive secrecy, of covering up mishaps. Mere hours before yesterday's closure announcement, Dr Nelson was insisting that he wanted his staff to move away from the culture of secrecy that prevafled for the first 30 years of the plant's life. But those who worked there at the time say that secrecy was part of the culture, both inherited and necessary - but that it did not cover any true misdeeds. . Forty years ago you could get in a car without wearing a seat belt, without an MoT, and there was no such thing as drunk driving. Of course it was secret.