MPs blast firms for soaring cost at Sellafield
A COMMITTEE of MPs today criticised the “spiralling costs and poor performance” of a consortium of private firms brought in to decommission nuclear site Sellafield, calling for the contract to be terminated if things did not improve.
The Public Accounts Committee has published a report on progress at Sellafield, as the cost to taxpayers of decommissioning and reprocessing the Cumbrian site skyrockets to over £70bn.
The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), a public body that owns Sellafield and hired the consortium Nuclear Management Partners (NMP) back in 2008, extended the contract for another five years last October.
“We have seen big delays and huge cost overruns on a number of major projects on the Sellafield site,” said Margaret Hodge, chair of the Public Accounts Committee.
“But, despite this, NMP had its contract to clean up the UK’s largest and most hazardous site extended for five more years.”
Hodge called on the NDA to “terminate the contract if NMP’s progress does not improve quickly” and asked for a review by the National Audit Office one year into the extended contract.