Sellafield’s race against time: nuclear waste clean-up not going quickly enough, PAC warns
|
The retrieval of waste from ageing buildings at the most hazardous
nuclear site in the UK is not happening quickly enough. In its
report on decommissioning Sellafield, the Public Accounts Committee
(PAC) warns that the estimated £136bn cost of the project would
rise even more if work is further delayed, while expressing
scepticism as to whether or not recent signs of improvement in
performance could represent another false dawn. The PAC found in
2018 that government...Request free
trial
The retrieval of waste from ageing buildings at the most hazardous nuclear site in the UK is not happening quickly enough. In its report on decommissioning Sellafield, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) warns that the estimated £136bn cost of the project would rise even more if work is further delayed, while expressing scepticism as to whether or not recent signs of improvement in performance could represent another false dawn. The PAC found in 2018 that government needed a firmer grip on Sellafield's nuclear challenges, and now warns that not enough progress has been made in addressing its most significant hazards. One building, the Magnox Swarf Storage Silo (MSSS), has been leaking radioactive water into the ground since 2018 – the PAC calculates, at current rates, enough to fill an Olympic swimming pool roughly every three years. The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) accepts this leak is its "single biggest environmental issue", but that the radioactive particles are "contained" in the soil and do not pose a risk to the public. The PAC's report finds that Sellafield Ltd has missed most of its annual targets for retrieving waste from several buildings on the site, including the MSSS. The PAC's inquiry heard that the MSSS is the most hazardous building in the UK, and as a result of Sellafield Ltd's underperformance will likely remain extremely hazardous for longer. The report seeks answers from Government on how it will hold the NDA and Sellafield Ltd to account in ameliorating the site's greatest hazards. As well as safety concerns, the PAC further warns at the impact that delays in the programme have on costs. In the long-term, waste will need to be stored in an underground Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) capable of storing it for thousands of years. The PAC finds that the date for the GDF has slipped from 2040 to the late 2050s, with every decade of delay meaning Sellafield could need to construct another storage building, each costing £500m-£760m. The GDF project is still at an early stage, with sites considered in Cumbria and Lincolnshire - though the PAC understands that Lincolnshire County Council has recently announced it is likely to withdraw. The report highlights some recent signs of improvement in Sellafield's delivery, with more emphasis put on planning in how it works with contractors and most recently-started projects being delivered in line with their business cases as a result. However, the report highlights the example of one of Sellafield's projects to refurbish an onsite lab so it could continue analysing waste samples - essential for safety. The report finds that this very poorly managed and now-paused project has seen £127m wasted. Its failure, which resulted from a lack of understanding of what physical state its labs were in, and from not doing the right remedial work to address their deterioration, illustrates the need to improve asset management at Sellafield. The report urges Sellafield Ltd to explain how it is addressing the deteriorating condition of its assets, which its safety experts have warned is making the site increasingly unsafe. The PAC's report also finds indications of a sub-optimal culture at the site, with concerns raised in the report given that the exceptionally hazardous nature of many of Sellafield's activities means that it is imperative that all employees and contractors on the site feel able to raise any concerns that they have without fear of consequences. The PAC is aware that the NDA paid £377,200 in 2023-24 to settle employment-related claims. Further, the PAC previously noted that non-disclosure agreements have been used elsewhere in the public sector to cover up failure. The report finds that Sellafield Ltd has signed 16 non-disclosure agreements in the last three years. It further seeks publication from the NDA of information around the prevalence and perception of bullying and harassment in its annual report. Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP, Chair of the Committee, said: “The intolerable risks presented by Sellafield's ageing infrastructure are truly world-class. When visiting the site, it is impossible not to be struck by the fact that one can be standing in what is surely one of the most hazardous places in the world. This is why we expect Sellafield's management of its assets, and the delivery of the project to decommission it, to be similarly world-class. Unfortunately, our latest report is interleaved with a number of examples of failure, cost overruns, and continuing safety concerns. Given the tens of billions at stake, and the dangers onsite to both the environment and human life, this is simply not good enough. “As with the fight against climate change, the sheer scale of the hundred-year timeframe of the decommissioning project makes it hard to grasp the immediacy of safety hazards and cost overruns that delays can have. Every day at Sellafield is a race against time to complete works before buildings reach the end of their life. Our report contains too many signs that this is a race that Sellafield risks losing. It is of vital importance that the Government grasp the daily urgency of the work taking place at Sellafield, and shed any sense of a far-off date of completion for which no-one currently living is responsible. Sellafield's risks and challenges are those of the present day. There are some early indications of some improvement in Sellafield's delivery which our report notes. Government must do far more to hold all involved immediately accountable to ensure these do not represent a false dawn, and to better safeguard both the public purse and the public itself.”
Notes to editors The illustrative timeline attached to this release is free to use; please credit ‘House of Commons illustrative timeline of Nuclear Decommissioning Authority's current plan for the decommissioning of Sellafield, June 2025'.
PAC report conclusions and recommendations Sellafield Ltd has not made enough progress in addressing the site's most significant hazards since the Committee last reported, in 2018. Several buildings on the site pose 'intolerable' risks due to their condition and the hazardous nature of the waste stored in them. One of these buildings, the Magnox Swarf Storage Silo (MSSS), which the NDA told us is the most hazardous building in the UK, is slowly leaking contaminated water into the ground, and is likely to continue to do so at least until the oldest section of the building has been emptied. Sellafield Ltd has missed most of its annual targets for retrieving waste from these buildings (and other important targets for turning different waste into glass). This was caused by some equipment not being in good enough condition, problems with installing new equipment and too few people having the skills required to operate the facilities. The consequence of this underperformance is that the buildings are likely to remain extremely hazardous for longer: the milestones for substantially completing the work are now up to 13 years later than Sellafield Ltd expected in 2018. However, we were pleased to hear that it has improved its storage of plutonium since we last reported. Recommendation 1. In its Treasury Minute response to this report DESNZ should set out what it will do differently to hold the NDA and Sellafield Ltd to account for Sellafield's performance against its annual targets, particularly with regard to the programmes to ameliorate the site's greatest hazards. The targets set for Sellafield Ltd neither support DESNZ and the NDA in holding it to account for poor performance, nor allow Sellafield Ltd to demonstrate it is making meaningful progress towards addressing the site's hazards. In recent years, Sellafield Ltd has missed its most important hazard reduction targets more often than it has achieved them, often by considerable margins. While carrying out work safely must come first, safety cannot be used as a 'get out of jail free card' to excuse poor performance. We do not believe that the current target-setting process allows DESNZ and the NDA to distinguish between legitimate reasons for missing a target and underperformance on the part of Sellafield Ltd. Additionally, these annual targets do not allow Sellafield Ltd to show it will be able to pick up the pace in future years in order to achieve the 'key decommissioning milestones' it has agreed with its regulators (some of which are decades away). These milestones mark a step-change reduction in the hazard buildings pose. To achieve them, Sellafield Ltd needs to fundamentally transform how the site functions - for example, in the case of MSSS, it wants to be removing 24 times as much waste as it did in 2023-24 within a decade. Recommendation 2.
Sellafield's ability to deliver its largest projects on time and budget is still too variable. While there are some recent signs of improvement, Sellafield continues to repeat old mistakes. Four of the largest projects at Sellafield will collectively cost £1.15 billion more, and be delivered many years later than Sellafield Ltd expected in 2018, the last time this Committee examined Sellafield. Sellafield has a poor track record of delays and cost overruns, but the NDA reassured us in 2018 that cost forecasting is improving while the Department believed that the estimates of those costs have begun to stabilise. Nevertheless, there are some signs that a corner may finally have been turned. Sellafield Ltd is now working with a group of contractors in a different way, which places more emphasis on planning. As a result, most of the projects that have started more recently are being delivered in line with their business cases. However, one of Sellafield's more recent major projects, the Replacement Analytical Project (RAP) has been managed very poorly indeed. When Sellafield Ltd 'paused' RAP last year, it was expected to cost up to £1 billion more than originally approved while new plutonium analysis capabilities would be at least 5 years late. Sellafield Ltd now believes that it can cut this gap to around one year and save money by converting a different building instead. However, £127 million spent on RAP will have been wasted. Recommendation 3. As it carries out more detailed planning for future provision of Analytical Services, Sellafield Ltd should write to the Committee at a suitable point (but within six months) to update us on:
The failure of the Replacement Analytical Project illustrates the need to improve asset management at Sellafield. Sellafield is frequently in a race against time to complete work before assets (such as buildings or equipment) reach the end of their life or risks materialise (particularly as changes to planning assumptions can affect many other facilities on the site). Poor asset management caused Sellafield Ltd's long-term plan for analysing waste to become incoherent: it did not understand what physical state its laboratories were in, or do the right remedial work to address their deterioration. Although Sellafield has resolved some of the maintenance issues which emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic, there is still a growing backlog of maintenance tasks that need to be performed. There are worrying implications for safety: malfunctioning equipment has limited Sellafield Ltd's ability to retrieve waste from its oldest facilities, while its safety experts have warned that the deteriorating condition of assets is making the site increasingly unsafe. Recommendation 4. Alongside the Treasury Minute response to this report, Sellafield Ltd should write to the Committee to explain how it is addressing the deteriorating condition of its assets. This should include information about the specific actions it is taking to increase the productivity of its maintenance teams, and what impact these actions have had, and are expected to have. DESNZ is not doing enough to ensure that long-term value for money is achieved from decommissioning the Sellafield site. The cost of decommissioning Sellafield continues to grow - notwithstanding the billions spent on the site every year. The NDA's tight funding setttlement for 2025-26 will mean more work slips into future years, increasing the long-term cost to the taxpayer. We were disappointed the Department sought to place the onus for achieving value for money entirely on the NDA and Sellafield Ltd: as the NDA's sponsor, it has an important role to play as well. We are still not convinced that UK Government Investments plays any useful role in the NDA's governance that the Department could not fulfil itself. We would also have expected the Department to take a more active interest in the relative cost of different options for cleaning up NDA sites so it fully understands the cost implications of its current policy of full site remediation. Meanwhile, the date when the NDA will be able to store waste permanently in a Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) has slipped from 2040 to the late 2050s, even though the programme is still only at an early stage. For every decade of delay, Sellafield could need to construct another storage building (each costing £500 million - £760 million) and would incur higher operating costs. Recommendation 5. The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and Sellafield Ltd should use their existing long-term financial models to produce and publish a range of scenarios, giving more insight into how government can reduce the lifetime decommissioning cost of the NDA estate. This should include an assessment of the cost (on both a discounted and undiscounted basis) if government funding for the NDA is constrained at current levels in all future years. The NDA and Sellafield Ltd still have more to do to build a culture where all employees feel able to raise concerns and report poor behaviour. The exceptionally hazardous nature of many of Sellafield's activities means that it is imperative that all employees and contractors on the site feel able to raise any concerns that they have without fear of consequences. While the witnesses told us that they felt the site's reporting culture was good, we remain to be convinced, since there are other indications of a sub-optimal culture. This Committee and its predecessors have received a number of letters from whistleblowers in recent years making concerning allegations, and we are aware that the NDA paid £377,200 in 2023-24 to settle employment-related claims. It is good that the Department, NDA and Sellafield Ltd recognise the need to do more to improve the site culture, and we acknowledge the improvement in staff survey results over recent years. However, it is concerning that the Department and the NDA did not identify the need to take action earlier - particularly in light of Sellafield Ltd's chief executive's observation that there was a disconnect between Sellafield's workforce and leadership when he took over in July 2023. Recommendation 6. The NDA should publish information in its Annual Report about:
|