Sellafield Cleanup Cost Rises To $175 Billion Amid Tensions With Treasury

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The cost of cleaning up Sellafield is expected to spiral to 136 billion pounds ($175 billion USD) and Europe's biggest nuclear waste dump cannot show how it offers taxpayers value for money, the public spending watchdog has said. Projects to fix buildings containing hazardous and radioactive material at the state-owned site on the Cumbrian coast are running years late and over budget. Sellafield's spending is so vast -- with costs of more than 2.7 billion pounds a year -- that it is causing tension with the Treasury, the report from the National Audit Office (NAO) suggests. Officials from finance ministry told the NAO it was "not always clear" how Sellafield made decisions, the report reveals. Criticisms of its costs and processes come as the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, prepares to plug a hole of about 40 billion pounds in her maiden budget. Gareth Davies, the head of the NAO, said: "Despite progress achieved since the NAO last reported, I cannot conclude Sellafield is achieving value for money yet, as large projects are being delivered later than planned and at higher cost, alongside slower progress in reducing multiple risks."

He added: "Continued underperformance will mean the cost of decommissioning will increase considerably, and 'intolerable risks' will persist for longer."

David Peattie, the NDA's chief executive, said: "Sellafield is one of the most complex environmental programs in the world. We're proud of our workforce and achievements being made, including the unprecedented retrieval of legacy waste from all four highest hazard facilities. But as the NAO rightly points out there is still more to be done. This includes better demonstrating we are delivering value for money and the wider significant societal and economic benefits through jobs, the supply chain and community investments."

Nuclear is clean

[locater16]

Except for the parts you should ignore, the man behind the curtain is not a nuclear industry PR employee so don't bother looking.

Re:

[kiviQr]

Have you ever seen coal mine, or even coal town. Fossil energy is not clean - but most people think only about air pollution not the rest.

Re:

[rsilvergun]

If we didn't have wind and solar as viable options both perfectly capable of providing base load power you might have a point.

Hell even if we pretend all the studies showing that wind and solar can provide base load even in places with poor wind and sun conditions The fact of the matter is we have limited funds to spend on clean energy and wind and solar even in a worst case scenario are a much better investment of those limited funds.

At a bare minimum we should max out the wind and solar we can rol

Re:

[crackerjack155]

Basically every large scale industrial plant that started 70+ years ago is a massive superfund site nowadays. For lead, asbestos, mercury, and/or a dozen other things.

Also, this plant made nuclear weapons, and those plants have historically been incredibly dirty because the government doesn't have to worry about things like a private company, especially in the late 1940s.

If they were building large scale solar panel or wind turbine factories 50+ years ago, they would also be covered in toxic waste. Just lik

It had a good run

[Powercntrl]

Personally I thought it was a decent sitcom, but the courtroom finale was a little cliched.

Wait, Sellafield? Sorry, I got nothing.

Just like Hanford Washington cleanup

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

The local economy depends on the cleanup money and the job will be milked for decades