Latest news
Launch of the Sellafield Plan
A groundbreaking plan has been published today that sets out the long term future of the Sellafield site.
The Sellafield Performance Plan has been compiled over the past two years under the guidance of Nuclear Management Partners (NMP), owners of the Site Licence Company. It is the first credible and underpinned lifetime plan for the Sellafield site and details the forward programme of operations, construction projects and decommissioning.
NMP Chairman Tom Zarges hailed the plan as a major milestone for the site, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and the nuclear industry in general. He added: “We have applied our world leading expertise over the past two years to producing this plan and we are fully committed to delivering the promises made in it.
“By working much more efficiently and effectively than has historically been the norm at Sellafield we will achieve true value for money to our customer, to the UK government and to the UK taxpayer.”
Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) Chief Executive Tony Fountain added: “We chose Nuclear Management Partners to run Sellafield Limited in 2008 and they have spent the first two years of their contract learning the site and identifying issues so that they could give us a true picture of its operations and decommissioning timescales.”
Dr. Ian Hudson, Sellafield Programme Director for the NDA, said “As owners of the Sellafield Site, we have a contract model in place to formally manage our relationships with Sellafield Limited as the site licence company operating the site and Nuclear Management Partners as the parent body organization for Sellafield Limited. This model allows us to monitor their performance and will be used to monitor the delivery of the performance plan.”
Todd Wright, Managing Director of Sellafield Limited, stressed the need for the delivery of the promises contained in the plan and added: “By providing funding of over £1.5bn for 2011/12, the NDA and UK Government have demonstrated their confidence in NMP and Sellafield Ltd’s capability to deliver this plan. We do not underestimate the expectations and level of responsibility this puts upon us to deliver on our promises and we do not underestimate the consequences of failing to do so.”
The Performance Plan also provides information crucial to the economic development of West Cumbria. Acceleration of the decommissioning programme at Sellafield means higher levels of employment than would otherwise have been the case. So, while the manpower profiles presented in the performance plan do indicate a long term decrease in workforce at Sellafield, this is a much more gradual reduction over a significantly longer time period than had originally been predicted in earlier plans.
Acceleration of the decommissioning plan also provides opportunities for the local supply chain and increased prospects of inward investment for West Cumbria.
Todd Wright continued “By accelerating the decommissioning work and by working flexibly, this allows us to invest time and resource to retraining and re-skilling our workforce to adapt to the future challenges on the site and for other potential nuclear missions in West Cumbria.”
