Sellafield clean-up costs expected to reach £136bn, with the public unable to show how Europe's largest nuclear waste repository is offering value for money to taxpayers the spending watchdog said.
A project to repair buildings containing hazardous and radioactive materials on state-owned land on the Cumbrian coast has been delayed for years and over budget. Sellafield's spending is so huge, costing it more than £2.7 billion a year, that it has caused tensions with the Treasury, a National Audit Office (NAO) report suggests.
Treasury officials told the NAO it was “not necessarily clear” how Mr Sellafield made decisions, the report found. As Chancellor Rachel Reeves prepares to plug an almost £40bn hole in her maiden budget, criticism of her costs and processes has been raised.
Europe's most dangerous industrial region was previously described by Britain's former Secretary of State as a “bottomless pit of hell, money and despair”. The Guardian's investigation into the nuclear leak in late 2023 revealed a range of cybersecurity issues at the site, as well as safety and workplace culture issues.
The NAO found Sellafield was making slower than expected progress in making its sites safer, with three of its most dangerous storage sites posing an “untolerable risk”.
The site is a random collection of buildings, many of which were not designed for long-term storage of nuclear waste and are currently in various states of disrepair. The facility stores and processes decades of nuclear waste from nuclear power and weapons programs, receives waste from countries such as Italy and Sweden, and is the world's largest plutonium repository.
Decommissioning Sellafield is predicted to cost £136bn, £21.4bn or 18.8% more than expected in 2019. It is expected that the building will eventually be demolished by 2125 and the nuclear waste buried deep underground at an undetermined location in the UK.
Completion of the underground project has been pushed back from 2040 to the 2050s at the earliest, meaning Sellafield will need to build stores and manage waste over a longer period of time. According to the NAO, each 10-year delay costs Sellafield between £500m and £760m. Meanwhile, the government wants to expand nuclear power generation, which will lead to even more waste.
Sellafield is owned by the taxpayer-owned and funded Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA). The NDA believes the cost of decommissioning Sellafield could range from £116bn to £253bn, depending on the length and complexity of the removal.
Plans to clean up three of the worst ponds – which contain dangerous nuclear sludge that must be painstakingly removed – are 6 to 30% lower than expected in 2018, when the NAO last produced its report. 13 years late. NAO said this was due to factors such as the aging of the building and restrictions due to the new coronavirus. , due to staffing and equipment failures. Sellafield has “collected far less waste than planned” since 2020, the report said.
The NAO said Sellafield could spend more on demolition of buildings at an earlier stage to be more efficient and provide better value for money.
NAO discovered that one of the ponds, a Magnox chip storage silo, was leaking 2,100 liters of contaminated water every day. The pond was scheduled to be empty by 2046, but this has been delayed until 2059. An investigation by the Guardian has revealed that water leaks could continue until 2050.
“While Sellafield has demonstrated that it can safely remove the most hazardous waste, it is not progressing rapidly enough to achieve its plans,” the NAO said.
The report said Sellafield last year defied the Treasury and reduced its workforce from 11,200 to 12,000 without consultation, despite previous promises to reduce its workforce through efficiency gains. It is said that the number has increased to
In one fiasco, Sellafield paid out £2.1 million more in staff bonuses in 2023 than they should have (about £200 per person). This was paid after a management decision that the NAO suggested was questionable.
Sellafield had hoped to replace its testing facility, which is more than 70 years old and in “extremely poor condition”, but after raising £265 million over seven years, delays and the condition of the test site's buildings This project is under consideration amid concerns. site. The NAO said this was the biggest risk to Sellafield's future as workers would be required to carry out a range of regular scientific tests.
Gareth Davies, director of the NAO, said: “Despite progress made since the NAO last reported, large projects are still running behind schedule and at higher costs. “We cannot conclude that Sellafield has yet achieved value for money due to slow development progress.” Reduce multiple risks. ”
He added, “If the poor performance continues, decommissioning costs will increase significantly, which means that the “unbearable risk'' will be prolonged.''
Mr Sellafield was fined £332,500 this month for cybersecurity failings, which the chief judge in the case, Paul Goldspring, said fell into the “nearly negligent” category.
The NAO announced that nuclear facilities have once again acknowledged that their cybersecurity efforts are inadequate.
NDA chief executive David Peaty said: “Sellafield is one of the most complex environmental programs in the world. I am proud of the results achieved.
“However, as the NAO rightly points out, there is still much work to do, including ensuring that we deliver value for money and make a wide range of important contributions through investment in jobs, supply chains and communities. This includes better demonstrating that they are delivering social and economic benefits.”
