The United Kingdom’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority said Wednesday it spent £3.2 billion ($4.2 billion) through its 2016-2017 fiscal year in carrying out its mission to clean up 17 nuclear sites around the country.
Milestones during the year included extracting all bulk stocks of nuclear fuel from the Pile Fuel Storage Pond at the Sellafield site in West Cumbria, eliminating all sodium potassium alloy once used to cool the fast reactor at Dounreay in Scotland, and installing the first of three devices that will remove radioactive debris known as “swarf” from the Magnox Swarf Storage Silo at Sellafield, according to the latest NDA Annual Report.
Roughly 60 percent of the NDA’s budget was spent on remediation operations at Sellafield, the largest and most technically complex of the cleanup sites, David Peattie, the new CEO of the nondepartmental public body, said in his yearly review. Making cleanup contractor Sellafield Ltd. a wholly owned subsidiary of the NDA saved more than £200 million over the 12-month period, he added.
“Despite our good progress, however, the Board remains concerned by the number of safety incidents reported across the estate last year. It is a disappointing increase and a priority area of focus for the Board and our new Chief Executive Officer,” NDA Chairman Tom Smith said in his introduction to the report.
Smith also expressed regret over NDA’s decision in March to pay out about £100 million to EnergySolutions and Bechtel, which had separately sued over its management of the procurement process for the contract for remediation of the nation’s Magnox plants. The settlements followed a July 2016 ruling from the U.K. High Court that NDA had mishandled the process.
