The center of the UK's nuclear industry has agreed on alternatives for how it will process waste into the next decade after delays and overspending hit a lab project.
In the face of a 2028 deadline to put facilities in place to treat and repackage plutonium, Sellafield paused a delayed project to build a replacement for its 70-year-old analytical lab.
Speaking to MPs last week, Euan Hutton, CEO of Sellafield Ltd, said he was "confident" in an alternative that involves refurbishing its old lab and borrowing facilities from another onsite lab.
This comes after the go live date for its Replacement Analytical Project (RAP) was delayed from 2028 until at least 2034 and costs ballooned to £1.5 billion ($1.93 billion).
While the alternative plan can accommodate Sellafield's waste processing requirements, questions remain over support for the remainder of the UK's nuclear industry, which RAP was intended to provide.
Sellafield, formerly known as Windscale, has been the center of the UK's nuclear industry since the 1950s. While the site is home to a number of companies, and the government's Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, Sellafield Limited is a British nuclear decommissioning Site Licence Company controlled by the NDA.
In October last year, the UK's public spending watchdog said Sellafield depends on an on-site laboratory that is "over 70 years old, does not meet modern construction standards and is in extremely poor (and deteriorating) condition."
The National Audit Office said [PDF] the laboratory is "not technically capable of carrying out the analysis required to commission the Sellafield Product and Residue Store Retreatment Plant (SRP)" to treat and repackage plutonium.
Sellafield's plan in 2016 was to convert a 25-year-old laboratory on the site, to replace the 70 year-old lab, under the "Replacement Analytical Project." The outline business case was approved in 2019 with an estimated cost of between £486 million and £1 billion ($626 million – $1.3 billion).
However, that project was "strategically paused" in February 2024 after it emerged Sellafield believed it could take until December 2034 to deliver the full capability, while cost could reach £1.5 billion ($1.93 billion).
Speaking to Parliament's Public Accounts Committee last week, Hutton said: "Fundamentally, around December 2023, there was an incoherence that came out between the availability of the analytical services and when I needed to have those available for the plutonium repack plant.
"We have created that alternative by delivering another programme of work, which we call post-operational clean-out. We continue to drive on a broad front, and that has given us a different option," he said.
Part of the plan involves refurbishing the existing 70-year-old lab, he said. "We have recently replaced all of the electrical distribution boards. We are working through the ventilation. We have removed some acute risks… and we are doing work to replace the roof."
The other part of the alternative involves a repurpose of the existing Sellafield mixed oxide fuel [MOS] plant. "In terms of plutonium analysis, we are very confident that we can refit a lab in the Sellafield MOX plant," he said.
Sellafield has spent around £250 million ($322 million) on RAP, but Hotton said around £147 million ($190 million) of that work could be repurposed in the new plan.
Questions remain over the needs of the rest of the UK, though. "It gets slightly more complex, because what we want to do at Sellafield is make sure that we support the UK's needs for future radiolytic analysis. Our needs will be catered for very clearly by our alternative," Hotton said.
Labour MP and PAC member Chris Kane said he could not fault Hutton's logic, but "it sounds like we have been here before."
The NDA had "cancelled three projects since 2012 after spending £586 million ($755 million) of taxpayers' money on them," he pointed out. ®