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Nuclear waste clean-up costs at Sellafield have spiralled amid delays to major projects, the Public Accounts Committee said in a searing critique on Tuesday.
The select committee slammed government’s decision to reappoint Nuclear Management Partners, a private consortium, to run the plant for five more years instead of retendering the contract.
The cost of one project, “Magnox swarf storage silos retrievals”, nearly doubled from £387 million to £729 million within 18 months, MPs found. Another was delayed by six years.
The Authority responsible for the site estimates total decommissioning costs will top £70 billion in cash terms.
Costs are rising to “astonishing levels” said committee chair Margaret Hodge. “We are not confident that taxpayers’ interests are being protected.”
She called on the government to axe NMP’s contract if its performance does not improve quickly.
The committee also raised concerns over plans to deal with a stockpile of plutonium that costs £40 million a year to store. The proposed solution, a “Mox” plant to convert the plutonium into fuel, “just doesn’t make sense,” said Hodge, as the costs outweigh the value of the fuel.
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