Performance Updates
Find out more about NDA Sites' Performance, visit our Programme Performance Updates section.
Our overriding objective is hazard reduction: the development of core values, priorities and a clear strategy which will ensure health, safety, security and protection of the environment for this and future generations. Some of the key issues on, or relating to, our sites concern potentially high hazards, contaminated land and the release of radioactive particles. There are, however, significant opportunities to bring forward site clearance, in particular by completing Magnox reactor decommissioning much earlier than currently planned.
Hazard reduction involves identifying all potentially hazardous waste from 20 civil nuclear sites and making them safe through immobilisation or other techniques. They are then in a passively safe form and can be placed in interim storage pending Government decisions on long-term management arrangements. Our top priorities are the high hazard plants, particularly at Sellafield and Dounreay, where we are putting a variety of intermediate and high level wastes into a passively safe form. Once we have dealt with this waste we can set about decommissioning the facilities that contained them.
At the same time, we will progress decommissioning and clean-up of the lower hazard plants. To emphasise the importance of reducing hazards we have agreed a package of Performanced Based Incentives (PBIs) aimed at incentivising contractor behaviour and encouraging improved performance in agreed work areas, especially in hazard reduction.
There were some assumptions about what the end state should be for each site, but following changes in Governmental policy in 2005 to allow a more flexible approach, we are re-examining with stakeholders.
| Key Issues | Our Approach | |
| Site End States | How to move forward the process to agree site end states. | We are consulting and seeking consensus with stakeholders, including local communities, on site end states. |
| High Hazard Legacy Facilities | How best to advance decommissioning and clean up of the higher hazard legacy facilities at Sellafield and Dounreay. Inadequate historic records mean that the precise contents of these facilities are unknown. Consequently, we have yet to choose the best way to retrieve the materials safely and without endangering the environment. | This is our number one decommissioning priority. British Nuclear Group provide us with a Lifetime Plan that provides comprehensive, substantiated, fully developed and costed plans for decommissioning the Sellafield facilities. We will present a reasoned case to the Government for increased funding. We will work with UKAEA and the regulators to speed up hazard reduction at Dounreay taking account of environmental factors. |
| Contaminated Land and Radioactive Particles | We do not yet have a full understanding of the extent and nature of the contamination on our sites. At Dounreay, radioactive waste particles leaked into the sea and have settled into the sediment. | We will work with our contractors and regulators to accelerate the development of plans for addressing contamination. At Dounreay, we will work closely with regulators and UKAEA to ensure that adequate monitoring of radioactive particles continues to the satisfaction of the environmental regulator (SEPA). |
| Decommissioning Magnox Stations | Whether we can complete the decommissioning of Magnox reactors much sooner than the established 125 year programme.
| We plan to explore further the feasibility of full decommissioning of reactor sites and site clearance in less than 25 years, subject to long term management arrangements being available. |