site. Removal of fuel Following the 1998 report, the Department of Trade and Industry was presented with three options for dealing with 25tonnes of radioactive reactor fuel at Dounreay. The options were: to reprocess it at Dounreay, to reprocess some at Dounreay and some at Sellafield, or to store it above ground at Dounreay. A plan was eventually devised to remove irradiated and unirradiated fuel to the Sellafield nuclear site, starting in 2014. In 2018, the NDA reported that it would be completed in 2018/2019. Nuclear Decommissioning Authority ownership On 1 April 2005, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) became the owner of the site, with the UKAEA remaining as operator. Decommissioning of Dounreay was initially planned to bring the site to an interim care and surveillance state by 2036, and as a brownfield site by 2336, at a total cost of £2.9billion. A new company called Dounreay Site Restoration Limited (DSRL) was formed as a subsidiary of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) to handle the decommissioning process. By May 2008, decommissioning cost estimates had been revised. Removal of all waste from the site was expected to take until the late 2070s to complete and the end-point of the project was scheduled for 2300. Apart from decommissioning the reactors, reprocessing plant, and associated facilities, there were five main environmental issues to be dealt with: A shaft used for intermediate level nuclear waste disposal was contaminating groundwater, and would be threatened by coastal erosion in about 300years. The shaft was never designed as a waste depository, but was used as such on a very ad hoc and poorly monitored basis, without reliable waste disposal records being kept. It was originally used to construct a tunnel for the sea discharge pipe. Later use of the shaft as a convenient waste depository had resulted in one hydrogen gas explosion caused by sodium and potassium wastes reacting with water. At one time it was normal for workers to fire rifles into the shaft to sink polythene bags floating on water. Irradiated nuclear fuel particles on the seabed near the plant, estimated to be about several hundreds of thousands in number, caused by old fuel rod fragments being pumped into the sea. The beach had been closed since 1983 due to this. In 2008, a clean-up project using Geiger counter-fitted robot submarines was planned to search out and retrieve each particle individually. Particles were