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Massive taxpayer payouts to UK nuclear executives

all the directors listed  have since moved into other jobs in the nuclear industry.

Nuclear costs spiral as clean energy budgets face axe,  Left Foot Forward, 2 June 2010, “…..there’s a need for an independent and open audit of NDA spending to examine the room for greater cuts there when you look at these examples of the organisation’s largesse:

* The ex-managing director of Sellafield, Barry Snelson, who ran the site on behalf of the NDA, was recently given a £2,000,000 golden adieu for “loss of office.”

* His colleague David Bonser, head of the thermal oxide reprocessing plant (THORP), was given a £1m pay off at the same time. He was in charge of the site, during the 2007 THORP leak that went unnoticed for 9 months and cost the organisation millions in lost revenue – revenue that the NDA is supposed to generate in order to ease the burden on taxpayers to cover the expense of legacy waste management and decommissioning costs.

* Similarly, Sellafield CEO Mike Parker picked up £526,000, fellow director John Edwards £420,000 and 10,000 site workers each got a “goodbye bonus” of £1,500. Unsurprisingly, all the directors listed above have since moved into other jobs in the nuclear industry.

* In 2008 the NDA paid out £3.8m in staff bonuses in the year after the THORP leak. Every member of regular staff received one, working out at nearly £12k average per staff, up to 40% of salary. The NDA agreed there was “room for improvement” on this. • The former NDA chief executive was paid £500k for 9 months’ work.

* As part of their deal with Nuclear Management Partners, the new consortium running Sellafield for the NDA, they will get a £50m per year performance bonus. This is on top of a £16.5m dividend pay out. Why have the NDA put these in the contracts, and what other surprises are lurking in their deals with subcontractors?

*Looking at their figures, total NDA expenditure for 2010/11 is £2.8bn. Over a quarter of this budget is currently spent on “support costs”; these are currently vaguely defined as those costs “not directly related to projects” and cover such areas as “site services, general support costs and stakeholder costs”……..

now Mr Huhne has a golden opportunity to think long-term and save the taxpayer billions by sticking to his guns and making sure any possible future subsidies by stealth, like the so-called ‘Fixed Unit Price’ scheme, are rooted out.

There were already serious delays in bringing forward the promised new nuclear programme even before the appointment of a nuclear-sceptic energy secretary and it is clear all this leaves prospects for a nuclear renaissance looking riskier than ever. Left Foot Forward analysis some months ago highlighted that hidden costs of new nuclear suggest four new nuclear reactors could cost nuclear utility EDF £50 billion.

This followed research by Citigroup which concluded:

“Three of the risks faced by developers — Construction, Power Price, and Operational — are so large and variable that individually they could each bring even the largest utility company to its knees financially.”

Nuclear costs spiral as clean energy budgets face axe | Left Foot Forward

June 3, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, UK | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear costs, nuclear renaissance, nuclear spin