Nothing
that $103 billion won't fix
Sellafield
clean-up cost reaches £67.5bn, says report
The
cost of cleaning up the Sellafield nuclear waste site has reached
£67.5bn with no sign of when the cost will stop rising, according to
a report.
BBC,
4
February, 2013
The
Public Accounts Committee's report said deadlines to clean the
Cumbria site had been missed, leaving crucial decommissioning
projects over budget.
It
suggested successive governments have failed to "get to grips"
with the hoards of waste stored at the site.
The
Nuclear Decommissioning Authority said it is facing up to the
challenges.
Set
up in 2005 as an "arm's length" government body, the
authority is responsible for managing the UK's nuclear waste.
Last
week Cumbria County Council rejected proposals to build a new
underground nuclear waste storage facility in the area, deciding not
to press ahead with a study for a possible site.
'Enormous
legacy'
The
Public Accounts Committee report follows criticisms by the National
Audit Office (NAO) in November.
The
NAO said rundown buildings posed "intolerable risks to people
and the environment".
Margaret
Hodge MP, chairwoman of the committee, said an "enormous legacy"
of nuclear waste had been allowed to build up at the plant.
"Over
decades, successive governments have failed to get to grips with this
critical problem, to the point where the total lifetime cost of
decommissioning the site has now reached £67.5 billion, and there's
no indication of when that cost will stop rising," she said.
"Furthermore,
now that Cumbria County Council has ruled out West Cumbria as the
site of the proposed geological disposal facility, a solution to the
problem of long-term storage of the waste is as far away as ever."
The
committee's report also calls for a "real sense of urgency"
to avoid risk and costs escalating.
'Tough
decisions
John
Clarke, chief executive officer of the Nuclear Decommissioning
Authority (NDA), said prior to the NDA's formation there was no
credible lifetime plan for Sellafield.
He
said: "Tough decisions about how we ultimately decommission the
site had simply been put off for future generations to deal with.
"We
are now facing up to those challenges and for the first time we have
a proper plan in place for the decommissioning of Sellafield.
"Since
the creation of the NDA in 2005, the financial investment at
Sellafield has increased from £900m to over £1.5bn a year.
"Of
course, not everything has gone smoothly on such a complex and
highly-technical programme, and the report has rightly pointed to
areas where we and the site need to do better."
The
Public Accounts Committee said 12 of the site's 14 projects were
behind schedule and five of them over budget.
'Lack
of trust'
"This
is an area of considerable deprivation with high unemployment. We are
looking for there to be clearer ambition that spending on this huge
scale contributes to creating jobs and supports sustainable growth in
the region and the UK," said Mrs Hodge, the Labour MP for
Barking and former minister.
Gary
Smith, national officer of the GMB union, said: "There is an
increasing lack of trust in the consortium that runs the site both
amongst the workforce and the wider community.
"There
needs to be immediate change at the top of the consortium and a
radical re-evaluation of the piecemeal hiving-off of the nuclear
sector to private companies that are clearly ill-equipped to cope and
have little interest in ensuring Britain has world-class nuclear
facilities."
Last
Wednesday's county council decision saw the authority's cabinet vote
against progressing to the next stage of a process that would have
seen studies take place in search of a suitable location for an
underground nuclear dump.
Cumbria
was the only area still considering housing the repository.
About
9,000 people are employed at Sellafield where radioactive waste lies
in ponds and silos.
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