Tricia Malley/Ross Gillespie

Seventy years of British nuclear history lie behind these concrete, stone and aluminium walls. Since opening in February 2017, Nucleus, the UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority’s (NDA) Nuclear and Caithness Archive, near Wick, Scotland, has been gathering thousands of records, images and plans about the UK’s civil nuclear industry. More documents are being transferred from 17 archives across the UK, as the NDA plans to house them all in this single purpose-built location.

The archive contains documents dating back to the 1950s, and some are classified as Top Secret. Records are kept in triplicate: a copy on paper, a microfilm and a PDF version, to reduce wear on the originals.


Some of the documents are in poor condition, but they will be needed for centuries to come, as they relate to the slow processes of nuclear decommissioning. That is why Nucleus was built to last. “We adopted a mass concrete approach to the archive spaces,” says Laura Kinnaird, associate at Edinburgh-based firm Reiach and Hall Architects, which designed the building. “This made for a very fast, robust and durable construction.” The archive is designed to both withstand and harness Scotland’s inclement weather. The building’s materials and its angular shape help minimise wind damage, and rainwater is collected to flush the building’s toilets. The design has won several awards, including the RIAS Award 2018 and RIBA Award for Scotland 2018.

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Within the building's sturdy walls, the archives are temperature- and humidity-controlled to preserve the papers. To keep these conditions stable, Nucleus’s doors, windows and walls are modular: they can be quickly replaced without exposing the documents to the outside world. ”We don't have to close for periods of maintenance,” explains John Norton, the NDA’s properties project and portfolio manager. “It really is designed to keep the doors open for the next hundred years.”

There will be plenty of traffic coming through those doors. Nucleus has 26 kilometres of shelving, and the documents on them are frequently read by professionals working in the civil nuclear industry. “People often think of archives as dusty shelves,” says Simon Tucker, the NDA’s head of information governance. “But this is very much an active archive.”

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