nuclear-news

We are paying lip service to it and dodging the question at the expense of future taxpayers.

Moreover, there is total confusion about what provisions are being put in place to manage any future waste from any new nuclear power stations.

Will the real DECC budget please stand up?

Last week, the Guardian published on its website figures which appeared to show that spending by the Department of Energy and Climate Change on nuclear waste management has risen by an astonishing 81%, as part of an overall budget increase from last year of over 146%.

In trying to find out whether this is true I have found out a truth worse than this, as well as an admission that any new nuclear operators are allegedly being asked to contribute to a fund not only to pay for management and disposal of the new nuclear waste which their plants will create, but also for that of existing nuclear waste!

According to the Guardian, in 2009/10 DECC’s entire spend totaled £3.18bn, but in 2010/11 it is spending £8.06bn, an increase of 146.02% that is largely due to nuclear liabilities.

This spending, according to the Guardian, breaks down as follows:

 We already knew that DECC is unique among government departments because it has to spend almost half of its budget on dealing with existing nuclear waste.

But to see that this has risen to almost almost 86% of overall DECC spending seemed incredible.

Trying to check this figure led me on a very confusing path.

My first port of call was the Guardian itself, where its reporter Simon Rogers said that DECC’s press office had told him that the increase in spending was due to increased cost of high level waste management at Sellafield.

I then had several lengthy phone conversations and email exchanges with DECC’s press officers, to see whether this was true.

They themselves were clearly struggling to understand what their own departmental figures meant and had to seek clarification more than once.

Now that they have explained them, I am even more concerned that the UK’s nuclear liabilities are being left for future taxpayers to pay for.

The increase in the amount allocated to the NDA in DECC’s budget is in fact only a paper increase. It is not real.

Peter Wilson at DECC said that the cash that actually went ‘out of the door’ to the NDA for its decommissioning work was £1.7bn.

This is in line with the NDA’s business plan, which says that government funding in 2010/11 is £1.69bn, rising to £2.022bn in the following financial year and £2.249bn in 2012/13.

But the government reviews every three or five years the cost of nuclear waste management over the next 100 years. Peter says “obviously that figure goes down as we spend money each year”.

Personally, I have never known it to go down.

In fact, as he says, “… it can also go up. That is what has just happened”.

Yes, this is what we expect.

He says the estimate “has increased by £5bn [to £55bn], and government budgeting rules mean that our expenditure tables also need to reflect that”.