aWHILE anti-nuclear campaigners are predicting the final demise of Dounreay's operations, the plant's management hopes to be able to reopen the Fuel Cycle Area within a few months, thereby allowing work on the controversial cargo of highly-enriched uranium from Georgia to begin.

But if the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate maintains its direction issued on Tuesday to keep the FCA, with its processing and reprocessing plants, closed for much longer, Dounreay will have to try to renegotiate several international nuclear contracts. Some of these may already be in trouble.

The plant's critics, meanwhile, said last night they would be disgusted if Dounreay somehow managed to resume its operations in the foreseeable future.

On Tuesday the NII confirmed its direction that the FCA remain closed until full safety investigations have been completed. This followed the main power supply and the back-up supply to the FCA being cut off for 16 hours after a digger damaged the cable last Thursday night.

A spokeswoman for Dounreay's operators, the UK Atomic Energy Authority, said yesterday: ''I think everybody is waiting to see how long this might take.

''We are not having to review the entire safety case for the different plants, we are reviewing the safety case with particular reference to the electrical problems in the FCA, so that should not take so long. Until we have completed our investigations we won't know what is wrong and what it will take to put it right, but we are hopeful it may be no more than a matter of a few months.

''If that is all the time it takes, then that shouldn't affect our contracts or contract negotiations too much. Obviously if it was significantly longer, then we would have to think again and perhaps it might require some renegotiation.''

Dounreay's D1203 plant is already licensed and as soon as the FCA is allowed to reopen, processing work could begin on the 4.2kg of the Georgian fuel which is unirradiated, producing targets for medical isotopes.

The 0.8kg which is irradiated will be stored until a decision is taken on what to do with it. If it is to be reprocessed it will have to wait until one of Dounreay's three reprocessing plants becomes operational with a safety certificate. Dounreay's director, Dr Roy Nelson, has already told the press he thought it would take about two years to have his reprocessing plants operational again with the necessary consents.

Mr Mike Townsley, of Greenpeace International, said yesterday: ''There is no scientific, social, political or economic justification for reprocessing whatsoever. Ministers must ask themselves why it is that there is no reprocessing in the USA?

''There isn't, because the US Government sees it as a genuine proliferation threat.''

He was shocked the FCA might reopen soon: ''How many warnings does there have to be before that place is closed? If they have overlooked the fundamental flaw in routing together the main supply and the back-up supply to the FAC, what else have they overlooked?''

Attempts by Scottish MEPs to hold an emergency debate in the European Parliament today on safety at Dounreay and other nuclear plants failed yesterday, writes Rory Watson. The move had been led by local SNP Euro-MP Winnie Ewing.

In a letter to the parliament's president, Mrs Ewing maintained that the decision to transfer a consignment of weapons-grade uranium from Georgia to the Scottish plant had exposed several major contradictions in the European Union's nuclear policy.