Investigations by local pressure group CORE [Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment] have revealed that Sellafield Ltd has significantly overstepped the timescale promised in its planning application for the ‘Evaporator D Project’ – a Project already heavily criticised by two Government Committees for its escalating costs and for its poor project management by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA).
Granted planning approved by Copeland Borough Council (CBC) in August 2009, the beach landing section of the overall Project was defined as consisting of three phases – excavation work on Sellafield beach to allow 11 evaporator modules to be offloaded from a barge, their transport onto the Sellafield site, and the remediation of the beach work once the transport was completed. Cited in CBC’s approval letter as a ‘reason for decision’ to grant planning permission, the phases were to be completed in a period which should ‘in total, not exceed a period of approximately three years’.
With the final module offloaded onto the Sellafield beach in September 2013 – some four years after planning approval was granted – and with no beach remediation started – CORE queried the validity of CBC’s planning approval via a Freedom of Information request to the Council. CBC responded that it was not aware that any breaches of planning permission had occurred but that ‘the onus was on Sellafield Ltd to implement the remediation works in accordance with the permission’. Prompted by CORE’s FoI request, CBC emailed Sellafield Ltd on 8th October 2013 asking that ‘an update on the marine access project, with particular reference to remediation and likely completion of the project (the original estimate was three years), be provided’. As at 11th December 2013 – two months after that request, no response from Sellafield Ltd had been received by CBC.
CORE’s spokesman Martin Forwood said:
‘Whilst Sellafield Ltd continues to openly flout the timescales of its planning approval for the botched Evaporator D project, Copeland Council seems happy to turn a blind eye to the company’s transparent failure to meet the spirit of that approval. Had Joe Bloggs in Whitehaven similarly failed to meet the terms of planning approval for a house extension or garden fencing project the Council would have been on him like a ton of bricks’.
As well as approval being granted for the Project by CBC in 2009, Sellafield Ltd also received a Licence from the Marine Management Organisation (MMO) valid to September 2012 to undertake marine work associated with preparing Sellafield beach in advance of the modules’ delivery. The overall work entailed the construction of ‘a suitable incline’ on the beach for unloading the barge and the removal of a large section of sand-dune to allow the modules to be transported from the beach to the site via a ‘temporary’ bridge over the River Ehen. Clearly recognising that the Project was falling badly behind schedule, Sellafield Ltd applied to and received from MMO a Licence extension to 2014 – though no such extension request or notification was made to Copeland Council who admitted that it was last updated on the Project by Sellafielod Ltd as far back as February 2010 (response to CORE’s FoI request).
At the time of the original planning application in 2009, CORE had sought assurances that the beach works and associated excavations for Evaporator D would be remediated and not left in place to facilitate the landing in the future of large reactor components by any potential new-build developer. Responding to CORE’s concerns in the Whitehaven News (9/9/09), Sellafield Ltd confirmed not only that once the Evaporator D Project was completed, remediation of the beach works was a condition of the planning consent and one to which it would adhere, but also that ‘to suggest we would ride rough-shod over planning conditions and use the beach facility for new build is absurd ….’
Martin Forwood added:
The sorry saga of the Evaporator D, whose costs to the taxpayer have spiralled from some £90M to £643M, still has some time to go with completion of the beach remediation work not now expected until March 2014. By the time the beach is put back to its original state and the temporary bridge over the River Ehen removed, it will be almost five years since planning consent was received – not the three years Sellafield Ltd stated in its original planning application’.