Written evidence submitted by CORE [Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment] to the Public Accounts Committee was raised in the Committee hearing today on the activities of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) at Sellafield.
Submitted last month, CORE’s evidence related to Sellafield’s commercial operations, the inability of the facilities to meet annual performance targets, and the chronic failure year on year by the NDA and site licence company Sellafield Ltd – despite the expertise available – to set realistic targets for the facilities.
CORE’s evidence, relating specifically to the performance of the Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (THORP) the Magnox Reprocessing Plant and the Waste Vitrification Plant, showed that since 2000/01, 72% of the targets set for the three facilities had been missed and that, since 2005/06 when the NDA took ownership of the facilities, that failure rate had spiralled to 92%.
CORE’s Martin Forwood said It’s about time that the chaotic underperformance that has engulfed Sellafield’s commercial operations over the last decade – and the NDA’s handling of those operations since 2005 – was given scrutiny by Government for, until today, these operations have fallen outside the remit of both the PAC and the National Audit Office (NAO).
In its summary of evidence, CORE pointed out that whilst the age, reliability and other limiting factors of the facilities and associated plant covered in CORE’s report would have contributed to their overall underperformance, they cannot explain the perennial setting of inappropriate and patently unrealistic targets by the NDA. It suggested that ‘a logical assessment of the underlying causes of this year on year failure might conclude that the NDA’s failure bears the hallmark of an organisation incapable of making best use of available expertise, and one poorly equipped to understand the capabilities of the site’s commercial facilities. Alternatively, it may either point to a covert desire to impress customers and Government that ‘all’s well’ at Sellafield or suggest that the expansion of its original clean-up and decommissioning remit to include other Government policies has resulted in the NDA becoming overstretched and its performance thereby adversely affected’.
CORE’s written evidence to PAC, which included a number of appendices charting the histories of the reprocessing and vitrification facilities as well as assessing the value of the NDA’s Sellafield Plan and the Evaporator D project, concluded with the recommendation to PAC that:
‘The absence of Government scrutiny or analysis of NDA’s performance in relation to Sellafield’s commercial operations needs to be addressed with urgency. Unless and until a sense of operational reality can be instilled within the NDA, its current failures – particularly in forecasting and setting future performance levels – are likely to be perpetuated. This carries implications not only for the NDA’s overall programme at Sellafield and related Government policies but also in respect of ensuring that UK taxpayers are getting full value for the significant monies expended on commercial operations’.