£127M wasted on failed UK nuclear cleanup plan

The center for the UK’s nuclear industry wasted £127 million ($172 million) during delays and replanning as it

scrambled to find alternatives for facilities which treat and repackage plutonium, a Parliamentary report found.

In the face of a 2028 deadline to replace its 70-year-old analytical lab, Sellafield Limited, part of a group of

companies and government bodies on the northwest England Sellafield site, has abandoned plans for its

Replacement Analytical Project (RAP). Ditching RAP was chalked up to multiple expected delays from 2028 until

at least 2034 and a half-a-billion-pounds cost increase to £1.5 billion ($1.93 billion).

A new report from the Parliament’s public spending watchdog says RAP “has been managed very poorly indeed.”

Sellafield, formerly known as Windscale, has been the center of the UK’s nuclear industry since the 1950s. While the

site is home to a number of companies, and the government’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, Sellafield

Limited, is a British nuclear decommissioning Site Licence Company controlled by the NDA.

In October last year, the UK’s public spending watchdog said Sellafield depends on an on-site laboratory that is

“over 70 years old, does not meet modern construction standards and is in extremely poor (and deteriorating)

condition.”

The National Audit Office said [PDF] the laboratory is “not technically capable of carrying out the analysis required

to commission the Sellafield Product and Residue Store Retreatment Plant (SRP)” to treat and repackage plutonium.

Sellafield’s plan in 2016 was to convert a 25-year-old laboratory on the site, which would replace the 70-year-old

lab, under the “Replacement Analytical Project.” The outline business case was approved in 2019 with an estimated

cost of between £486 million and £1 billion ($626 million – $1.3 billion).

It later emerged that it could take until December 2034 to deliver the full capability, while cost could reach £1.5

billion ($1.93 billion). Sellafield “strategically paused” RAP in February 2024.

In a report this week, the House of Commons’ Public Accounts Committee said: “Sellafield Ltd’s performance in

delivering major projects (such as new buildings to store waste or make it safe) has historically been very poor, with

large cost increases and delays occurring all too frequently.