MPs find £127M was wasted on failed UK nuclear cleanup plan • The Register
The center for the UK’s nuclear industry wasted £127 million ($172 million) during delays and replanning as it scrambled to find alternatives for facilities which treat and repackage plutonium, a Parliamentary report found.
In the face of a 2028 deadline to replace its 70-year-old analytical lab, Sellafield Limited, part of a group of companies and government bodies on the northwest England Sellafield site, has abandoned plans for its Replacement Analytical Project (RAP). Ditching RAP was chalked up to multiple expected delays from 2028 until at least 2034 and a half-a-billion-pounds cost increase to £1.5 billion ($1.93 billion).
A new report from the Parliament’s public spending watchdog says RAP “has been managed very poorly indeed.”
Sellafield, formerly known as Windscale, has been the center of the UK’s nuclear industry since the 1950s. While the site is home to a number of companies, and the government’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, Sellafield Limited, is a British nuclear decommissioning Site Licence Company controlled by the NDA.
In October last year, the UK’s public spending watchdog said Sellafield depends on an on-site laboratory that is “over 70 years old, does not meet modern construction standards and is in extremely poor (and deteriorating) condition.”
The National Audit Office said [PDF] the laboratory is “not technically capable of carrying out the analysis required to commission the Sellafield Product and Residue Store Retreatment Plant (SRP)” to treat and repackage plutonium.
Sellafield’s plan in 2016 was to convert a 25-year-old laboratory on the site, which would replace the 70-year-old lab, under the “Replacement Analytical Project.” The outline business case was approved in 2019 with an estimated cost of between £486 million and £1 billion ($626 million – $1.3 billion).
It later emerged that it could take until December 2034 to deliver the full capability, while cost could reach £1.5 billion ($1.93 billion). Sellafield “strategically paused” RAP in February 2024.
In a report this week, the House of Commons’ Public Accounts Committee said: “Sellafield Ltd’s performance in delivering major projects (such as new buildings to store waste or make it safe) has historically been very poor, with large cost increases and delays occurring all too frequently.
“There are signs of improvement – however, given Sellafield’s track record, we are yet to be fully convinced that this is not another false dawn. Another reason to be skeptical is Sellafield’s poor management of the RAP. At the point it paused work, the forecast cost had risen by £820 million, and the project was five years delayed,” the PAC report said.
After abandoning the RAP, Sellafield plans to convert a different building to support a Store Retreatment Plant, which re-treats and repackages existing plutonium material, making it more suitable for durable, long-term storage. It also plans to refurbish the 70-year-old existing building — including replacing the roof — so it can carry on using it until 2040. The alternative plan would provide a service until 2040, whereas the RAP was expected to remain in use until 2070.
However, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority told PMs the new plan would cost between £420 million and £840 million ($570 million – $1.1 billion), much less than the RAP. Although some of the costs from the early projects could be recouped in the new plan, the PAC said £127 million ($172 million) spent on RAP will have been wasted.
The NDA expects the clean-up of the Sellafield site to go on until 2125 and cost £136 billion ($184 billion), an estimate which has increased nearly 19 percent since March 2019. ®
