Professor Gordon MacKerron

Delays and neglect in remediating the UK’s legacy nuclear facilities has led to huge increases in their costs, according to a government-commissioned report authored by a University of Sussex energy expert. The expected bill has risen by some £20 billion in the last six years.

Professor Gordon MacKerron, Director of SPRU - Science and Technology Policy Research, was commissioned by the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change to look at the history of managing nuclear wastes and decommissioning. The report is published today (2 March).

Professor MacKerron obtained high-level access to the main decision-makers in the public sector, especially the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), the agency now responsible for cleaning up the legacy.

He says: “The history of managing and funding our nuclear legacy has, until very recently, been dire.

“Funds collected from consumers for decommissioning and waste management were diverted to other ends.

“And for decades minimal attention was paid to deteriorating nuclear facilities - and the cost of remediating them is consequently now much higher, probably by several billion pounds, than it would have been had serious work started up to two decades ago.

“The establishment of the NDA in 2005 was a substantial step forward – for the first time a single body focussed entirely on managing the nuclear legacy.

“Government has learned lessons from history and the funding regimes for British Energy’s current reactors, as well as any future reactors, are much more robust.”

Ed Davey, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, welcomed the report as “a valuable contribution to an important debate”. He added: “It paints a stark picture of the UK’s nuclear history.”

Between 2003 and 2007 Professor MacKerron chaired the government’s independent Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM), responsible for formulating and recommending a new approach to UK policy for the management of higher activity nuclear wastes.