28 Jun (NucNet): Operational performance of the UK’s Sellafield nuclear complex has been disappointing, but crucial milestones have been achieved in cleaning up the country’s nuclear legacy, the head of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) has said.
NDA chief executive officer John Clarke, who recently completed his first full year in charge of the authority, said: “Sellafield remains our top priority. It is the world's most complex nuclear site with unprecedented challenges.”
He said: “Against this background, performance in the year has been mixed with some notable milestones achieved on legacy ponds and silos balanced by some disappointing project cost increases and schedule slippages together with operational performance impacted by unreliable plant.”
At around 1.6 billion pounds (GBP) (2.4 billion US dollars, 1.8 billion euros) a year, Sellafield accounts for more than half the NDA’s annual expenditure and more than half of its resources.
Estimates of future costs are uncertain for reasons including a lack of detailed information on the design of the legacy ponds and silos at Sellafield and the exact quantities and chemical composition of the historical waste held in them. This results in “potential significant uncertainty” in both the process and costs of dealing with these materials, the NDA said.
The NDA is tasked by the government to run the decommissioning and clean-up of old nuclear facilities such as Sellafield in Cumbria and Dounreay in Scotland, at a total of 19 nuclear sites.
Mr Clarke’s comments came as the NDA published its annual report and accounts for the past year.
In its report, the organisation emphasises costs are being trimmed while Mr Clarke said lifetime costs – which the NDA defines as everything needed to completely decommission a site including making it ready for future use – are “reducing”.
However the report says the estimated nuclear provision – the future cost of decommissioning and clean-up – has increased from GBP 52.9 billion last year to GBP 58.9 billion this year.
The report says defueling at the Chapelcross and Dungeness A nuclear plants had been completed, removing 99 percent of radioactivity from those sites.
It says the NDA has seen higher than expected commercial income of almost GBP 900 million aided by extended generation at Wylfa and land sale at Capenhurst worth GBP 50 million.
But the report warns that the clean-up process will take “many decades” and will need to address many of the unique, high-hazard problems that accumulated in the post-war years.
The NDA’s annual report and accounts are online:
www.nda.gov.uk/documents/upload/Annual-Report-and-Accounts-2012-2013.pdf
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