The cost of managing Britain’s most hazardous nuclear waste has risen by almost a fifth to £136 billion due to a failure to set a realistic budget, the government’s spending watchdog has concluded.
Sellafield, which is home to about 85 per cent of the UK’s nuclear waste and stores the most hazardous waste, is not delivering value for money as large projects are running behind schedule and over budget, according to the National Audit Office’s latest assessment.
The site in Cumbria is operated by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), a mainly taxpayer-funded body, and over its lifetime will retrieve about 3.3 million m3 of waste from ageing facilities and store it in more modern silos.