Armed police train in attempted theft of radioactive material scenario in Scotland

Armed police have for the first time trained in a scenario where an attempt is made to attack and steal a shipment of radioactive material being transported from the Dounreay nuclear power plant near Thurso, Scotland.

According to the BBC, the Civil Nuclear Constabulary exercise involved armed attackers deliberately crashing a car to stop a lorry reaching Georgemas Junction, a railway station about six miles from the plant. The station has previously been used for transporting radioactive material from Dounreay to Sellafield in Cumbria for reprocessing or storage. The training exercise also included an employee at Dounreay, near Thurso, being "arrested" in connection with the attack.

The Civil Nuclear Constabulary (CNC) worked with Police Scotland and other emergency services during the exercise held in late September.

A workshop was also held involving police, Highland Council, Dounreay and the Vulcan Naval Reactor Test Establishment, which is a military facility used for testing prototype nuclear reactors for submarines.

Dounreay was built as an experimental nuclear reactor site in the 1950s and is now in a years-long process of being decommissioned.