nuclear-news

Let’s not pretend nuclear works

  Funding the Future, Richard Murphy, June 6 2025, https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2025/06/06/lets-not-pretend-nuclear-works/

As the Public Accounts Committee has reported this week:

The retrieval of waste from ageing buildings at the most hazardous nuclear site in the UK is not happening quickly enough.

In its report on decommissioning Sellafield, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) warns that the estimated £136bn cost of the project would rise even more if work is further delayed, while expressing scepticism as to whether or not recent signs of improvement in performance could represent another false dawn.

The PAC found in 2018 that government needed a firmer grip on Sellafield’s nuclear challenges, and now warns that not enough progress has been made in addressing its most significant hazards.

One building, the Magnox Swarf Storage Silo (MSSS), has been leaking radioactive water into the ground since 2018 – the PAC calculates, at current rates, enough to fill an Olympic swimming pool roughly every three years. The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) accepts this leak is its “single biggest environmental issue”, but that the radioactive particles are “contained” in the soil and do not pose a risk to the public.

The PAC’s report finds that Sellafield Ltd has missed most of its annual targets for retrieving waste from several buildings on the site, including the MSSS. The PAC’s inquiry heard that the MSSS is the most hazardous building in the UK, and as a result of Sellafield Ltd’s underperformance will likely remain extremely hazardous for longer. The report seeks answers from Government on how it will hold the NDA and Sellafield Ltd to account in ameliorating the site’s greatest hazards.

Nuclear power created the most hazardous building in the UK.

The cost of nuclear cleanups is staggering.

And still, we pretend that nuclear power is a cost-effective way of generating power.

Who do those making this claim think are fooled by it?

June 7, 2025 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, UK