Taking forward decommissioning - the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (Paperback)

"Taking Forward Decommissioning (HC 238)" examines the process of decommissioning of the UK's nuclear power stations and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority's (NDA) performance in using contracts to take forward decommissioning of the various sites, since April 2005, along with what lessons can be learnt. By December 2007, 14 facilities had already shut down and were in the process of being decommissioned; current plans envisage that most of these sites will be cleared over a 100-year period, at the current estimated cost of GBP 61 billion.The NDA's estimate of the undiscounted future costs of sites over the remaining lifetime, GBP 73 billion, was almost GBP 17 billion higher than the estimate made by the Department in 2003. The NDA itself was established on 1 April 2005 to ensure the safe and efficient clean-up of the UK's first generation of civil public sector nuclear facilities, with responsibility for 19 sites. Published in 2002, the Command Paper "Managing the Nuclear Legacy: A Strategy for Action (Cm. 5552)" (ISBN 0101555229, available below) set out broadly the Government's structure for taking forward decommissioning by allowing competition.The National Audit Office recommends that the NDA should: develop its current contract incentives; strengthen its capacity to scrutinise cost estimates; determine the reasons for the continuing increases in cost estimates submitted by sites; evaluate the risks from more commercial management of its sites and develop clear and transparent measures of the progress of decommissioning; and, require site licensees to prepare lifetime plans on the most realistic available funding assumptions.