DOUNREAY can only be decommissioned properly if nuclear material is sent to Cumbria by train, councillors have been told.
Dr Adrian Simper, head of strategy at the Nuclear Decommissioning Agency (NDA), told Highland councillors special trains would begin to transport nuclear material from Caithness to Sellafield in Cumbria this summer.
Up to 90 consignments are expected to make the journey over the next five years, the first of which will be 44 tonnes of uranium from the Dounreay Fast Reactor.
Permission has been granted for these shipments but further consultation and consent is needed to send around 70 tonnes of nuclear fuel from the Prototype Fast Reactor and other un-irradiated material on the route.
Dr Simper said Dounreay did not have the capability to reprocess the fuel and the clean-up of the site could not be completed if it remained.
The NDA has calculated sending the material to Sellafield for reprocessing will cost £60 million, compared with £65m for keeping it at the Caithness plant.
Stan Blackley, chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland, said: "Transporting nuclear waste is unnecessary and risky, with enormous potential for accidents and mistakes. Existing nuclear waste should be securely stored, with full retrievability, above ground and as close as practical to where it arose."
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