Costs of cleaning up the Sellafield nuclear waste dump are expected to surge to £136 billion, leaving questions over the site’s “value for money”.
Britain’s public spending watchdog said on Wednesday that efforts to fix buildings at the state-owned Cumbrian site had been gripped by delays and ballooning costs.
“We cannot yet say that [owner] the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and Sellafield are achieving value for money,” the National Audit Office said in a report.
Though progress had been made in removing the most hazardous waste for the first time, work needed to be done to build new storage and upgrade ageing facilities before Sellafield is eventually decommissioned in 2125, the report found.
Costs of decommissioning Sellafield were expected to hit £136 billion as a result, marking a £21.4 billion, or 18.8%, increase on the last forecast in 2019.
Waste from the site is ultimately set to be buried deep underground in the future, though delays have seen the project’s completion pushed back from 2040 to the 2050s.
It comes as Britain sets its sights on ramping up nuclear power generation through the likes of new small modular reactors, which would create more waste to be dealt with.
“Sellafield has made slower progress in reducing site risks than it would have liked and must now significantly accelerate the pace at which it is retrieving waste from its oldest storage facilities,” the National Audit Office added.
“It still lacks a comprehensive measure to assess progress in reducing risk.
“If it underperforms, the cost of completing its mission will increase considerably, and ‘intolerable’ safety risks will persist for longer.”
Several contractors work in the UK nuclear industry, including engineers John Wood Group PLC (LSE:WG.), Jacobs Solutions Inc (NYSE:J), Atkins and Korea's Doosan, French nuclear specialist Orano, as well as contractors such as Costain Group PLC (LSE:COST) and Amey.