The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) is spending £100m building the facility and dealing with the waste.

Work has started on constructing a store for up to 240,000 tonnes of low-level radioactive waste at the Dounreay nuclear site in Caithness.

Graham Construction will build the first two of up to six vaults. Each vault will be the size of a football pitch and 20m (65ft) deep.

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The store will later be covered with earth and landscaped.

The rubbish includes paper, rags, tools, glass, concrete and clothing contaminated by radioactivity.

Once inside the store it will be monitored for 300 years. After that period of time the radioactivity will have decayed by 95%.

Over the course of three to four years, more than 150 tonnes of intermediate level waste is also to leave Dounreay going to a storage site in Belgium.

(GK)