Cost of nuclear clean-up soars

The cost of cleaning up the UK's nuclear industry is set to soar beyond the current £70bn estimate, a House of Commons select committee report warned last week.

The Trade and Industry Committee is also worried that the position of the UK as number one in the field could be undermined because the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority's future depends on it winning decommissioning deals in the face of fierce international competition.

The committee says that the final costs of decommissioning are "still unclear", after noting that estimated prices are shooting up year-on-year.

Costs have rocketed from £48bn four years ago, to £56bn in 2004 and £70.2bn this year.

The report warns that the present estimate is likely to be "significantly" less than the actual costs because of further investigative work at Sellafield and Dounreay and because "the industry appears reluctant to continue reprocessing spent fuel while it is more expensive than buying new stocks of uranium".

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority was given a series of assets to fund its clean-up work - including the ageing Magnox rectors and the "trouble prone" Thorp and Mox fuel reprocessing plants at Sellafield.

However, the committee remains worried that the plants will not generate enough cash.

[Contract Journal, 23 August 2006, p 4]