20 Jun (NucNet): The UK’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority has improved its performance at the Sellafield nuclear site, but still has a long way to go in decommissioning and cleaning up the facility, facing continued delays and an expected overspend of up to £913m, says the National Audit Office in a report published today.
Since the NAO last reported in 2015, the NDA and Sellafield Limited have made significant progress with programmes to reduce risk and hazard in legacy ponds and silos at Sellafield, the NDA’s largest and most hazardous nuclear site.
This includes work to empty one legacy pond – the pile fuel storage pond – of 70% of its radioactive content. The NDA also expects it will reach critical milestones with legacy facilities earlier than it did in 2015.
The report highlights that most major projects at Sellafield delivered their work to schedule and to budget in 2017-18. This continues a trend of improvement since 2014-15, following the NAO’s previous report in this area, the NAO said.
However, major projects are still predicted to deliver late and to cost more than the NDA originally expected. In 2015, the NDA’s nine major projects which were in construction were anticipated to cost an additional 60% of their budget at design stage. This has now been reduced to 29% over budget, which while a substantial improvement, is still a forecasted overspend of £913m.
The NDA is responsible for operating, decommissioning and cleaning up 17 nuclear reactor and research sites in the UK. The NDA’s work includes reprocessing spent fuel from old nuclear reactors, managing and storing nuclear materials, removing and managing contaminated waste, and decontaminating and dismantling legacy facilities.
The NDA estimates that this work will be completed by 2120, at a cost of £121bn, but these estimates remain highly uncertain. Sellafield accounted for 61% of the NDA’s total spend of £3.3bn in 2017-18.
The NAO said: “We have previously reported on the NDA’s progress with reducing risk and hazard on the Sellafield site and found that the NDA had struggled to understand the full extent of the work necessary to clean up its most hazardous facilities.”
The report is online: https://bit.ly/2I6gQal
