Sellafield bosses forced to say sorry over £70bn-plus cleanup costs

 

MPs embarrass company chief executive at Commons hearing as report highlights huge cost overruns and failures..

The chairman of the American-led consortium that runs Britain's largest nuclear complex at Sellafield was forced into a humiliating apology on Wednesday after admitting a raft of cost overruns, performance failures and an expenses scandal. Tom Zarges, the head of Nuclear Management Partners (NMP), said he was a "long way from satisfied" by the track record of the business after it was pilloried by members of the Commons public accounts committee.

 

 

"We are humbled and truly sorry for any of those events which have cost British taxpayers money," said Zarges, who insisted nevertheless that NMP was "not about earnings", but about performance. "While we have had achievements we are not satisfied with those achievements. We are a long way from satisfied," he added.

 

We have reported this week that the bill for cleaning up the Cumbria site will rise even higher than its current estimated figure of £70bn as operators struggle to assess the full scale of the task.

Zarges was forced onto the defensive after MPs quoted extensively from a review prepared by auditing firm KPMG for the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), the public body charged with overseeing NMP and Sellafield. A redacted copy of the accountant's report was leaked last month by an environmental consultant, David Lowry, causing the committee's chair, Margaret Hodge, to express astonishment that the contract had been extended by the NDA.

 

The cost of doing this was on average £300,000 per person per year, and KPMG and the committee members expressed deep concern that such a scheme, which clearly benefited the consortium, was being used even for back-office staff at extra cost and to the disadvantage of local people.

Zarges insisted that all the staff who were brought in did so on merit, but even Clarke admitted that the system had got out of hand and some of the secondees were not as good at their jobs as he would have expected.

 

There was also heavy criticism over NMP expenses that had been revealed in earlier media reports. Among the items picked on by Hodge was a £714 bill for a "cat in a taxi".