The total cost of cleaning up the legacy of nuclear waste at Sellafield now stands at £67.5 billion and it could escalate further if the British taxpayer is left to hold all the risk in contracts, a House of Commons committee has warned.
“Over several decades, successive governments have been guilty of failing to tackle issues on the site, allowing an enormous nuclear legacy to build up,” the Commons Public Accounts Committee said.
The UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority was set up 2005 to tackle Sellafield’s “extraordinary accumulation of hazardous waste, much of it stored in outdated nuclear facilities”.
Since then it has brought in international contractors to help the plant’s operators, Sellafield Ltd.
Plans to build an underground storage for all of the UK’s nuclear waste could take 27 years.
Under the proposal, geologists would spend 15 years investigating a district’s suitability once a community can be persuaded to take it, while 12 years more would be needed to dig out the site.
