The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority

01 April 2008

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority has today published an approved 3 year Business Plan which includes detailed funding levels for our 19 sites for the financial year 2008/2009.

 Business Plan 2008-11 (4Mb)

This means that via our Site Licence Companies it is planned to spend a total of £2,594.0 million on our site programme over the next twelve months. This compares to an equivalent spend of £2,472.0 million over the last year. Our total budget for the next three years is £8.6 billion – representing an increase of £671 million compared with the NDA’s first three years and it is the largest amount of expenditure on the UK civil nuclear clean-up programme.

The Business Plan reflects our approved Strategy published in April 2006 and the additional responsibilities we have taken on since then for implementing Government policy on the long-term management of low level and higher activity wastes. It sets out our key objectives and plans for delivering our priorities over the next three years.

Our principal objectives for 2008-2011 are to:

• Encourage the highest standards in health, safety, security and environmental performance
• Deliver hazard and risk reduction
• Progress decommissioning and clean-up
• Maximise commercial value from our existing assets and operations Ensure safe management of radioactive waste and materials
• Determine the scope of the liabilities

Our secondary objectives are to:

• Provide socio-economic support and development
• Deliver skills, research and development and supply chain development

To enable us to deliver our objectives effectively, we will also:

• Compete the management of our sites
• Control costs and drive efficiency

Progress against these objectives will be reported in our Annual Report and Accounts.

This year's funding allocation reflects the agreed Comprehensive Spending Review settlement for 2008-11, the approved NDA Business Plan for the same period and our Strategy commitment to prioritise funding for higher hazard activities.

The funding limits have been communicated to each Site Licence Company management team for the sites under their control and set a clear target against which the SLCs can deliver an agreed programme of work with safety, security and environmental protection as the highest priority. As in previous years we will be incentivising our SLCs to deliver savings. These will be utilised to meet emergent issues and allocated to sites based on priority and affordability. This process of portfolio management has proved itself and will help maximise the overall effectiveness of our funds and secure value for money for the taxpayer.