Sellafield clean-up costs reach GBP53 billion

The estimated cost of decommissioning and cleaning up the Sellafield site in the UK has increased to GBP53 billion ($81 billion), the National Audit Office has noted. The increase has been attributed to a better understanding of the tasks involved.

The estimated cost of decommissioning and cleaning up the Sellafield site in the UK has increased to GBP53 billion ($81 billion), the National Audit Office (NAO) has noted. The increase has been attributed to a better understanding of the tasks involved.

The Sellafield site's nuclear facilities include those connected with the Magnox reprocessing program, the Sellafield mixed-oxide fuel plant, the Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant, and nuclear waste treatment plants. It is also home to redundant facilities from defence work in the 1950s, which included making plutonium for nuclear weapons (Image: Sellafield Ltd)

In an update of progress at the Sellafield site, the NAO said, "As of February 2015, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority's (NDA's) estimate of the discounted nuclear provision for the authority's estate was around GBP70 billion ($107 billion), of which GBP53 billion ($81 billion) relates to Sellafield - an increase of GBP5 billion ($7.6 billion) from 2013-14."

Margaret Hodge, chair of the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee commented, "Despite my committee's calls in February 2014 for the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority to make big improvements, the cost of cleaning up the nuclear waste at Sellafield continues to soar." She added, "The authority's work at Sellafield is not just costing more, it is also taking much longer than planned and, for 2014-15, it looks like work will be behind schedule for the fourth year running."

In a statement, the NDA defended the increased estimated costs, saying: "The preliminary reason for increases in costs and schedule is because we now have a better understanding of the technical approach necessary to tackle these unique facilities that date back to the 1940s and 50s."

The NAO noted, "During 2014-15, performance has improved, with in-year costs being slightly less than planned, and progress against schedule being closer to, though still behind, plan."

Contract termination

In January, the NDA announced that it was terminating its GBP9 billion ($13.7 billion) contract with private consortium Nuclear Management Partners (NMP) to manage the clean-up of the Sellafield site.

The government agreed last year with the Public Accounts Committee's conclusion that it was a priority to consider what contractual model might best deliver improved performance and value for money at Sellafield. In the meantime, it endorsed the NDA's decision to roll the current PBO contract forward into the second term, from 1 April 2014, to ensure that the progress made in the first five-year term could be built upon.

Hodge said, "It has taken far too long for the authority to deal with management incompetence at Sellafield. My committee concluded in February 2014 that the authority had not demonstrated why NMP's ownership of Sellafield provides value for money." She added, "Yet the authority only took the decision in January 2015 to terminate this contract with NMP, which is almost a year after my committee told it to do so if performance did not improve."

The NDA defended the delay, saying: "Before deciding whether to cancel the contract with NMP the NDA needed to first satisfy itself and the government that it had an alternative model that would give greater confidence of delivering progress and value for money. We have been through a thorough process to underpin that important decision."

The NAO noted that the NDA's termination of its contract with NMP will cost it some GBP430,000 ($655,168).

Sellafield Limited - the Site Licence Company which operates the site on behalf of the NDA - will now become a subsidiary of the NDA and be led by a team appointed and governed by a newly-constituted board of the site licence company.

Researched and written
by World Nuclear News