ECA Update: July 1, 2013
Published: Mon, 07/01/13
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NNSA Leadership Change
Secretary Moniz
June 28, 2013
Secretary Moniz
June 28, 2013
Dear Colleagues:
As you know, Neile Miller, NNSA Principal Deputy Administrator and Acting NNSA Administrator, recently announced her plans to depart from the Department. Neile graciously accepted our request to extend her time at DOE, and we are grateful for her leadership during this critical time. Please join us in thanking Neile for her service and wishing her the best in her future endeavors.
As Neile departs the Department, Deputy Secretary Poneman and I are pleased to announce that Bruce Held, Associate Deputy Secretary, will serve as the Acting NNSA Administrator. Bruce's invaluable experience and expertise on national security issues will ensure a smooth transition as we work to advance the Department's national security mission.
Michael Lempke, NNSA Associate Principal Deputy Administrator, will manage the daily operations of NNSA until Bruce returns from leave on Monday July 8th. Of course, leadership of the Department's national security apparatus will continue with strong support from the rest of the NNSA leadership team, including Deputy Administrators Don Cook and Anne Harrington.
Please join us in welcoming Bruce to his new role and thanking the existing team for their continued leadership.
Secretary Moniz and Deputy Secretary Poneman
Senate Energy and Water Development Fiscal Year 2014 Appropriations Subcommittee Mark Summary
Senate Appropriations Committee
June 25, 2013
Senate Appropriations Committee
June 25, 2013
Washington, DC - The U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development today approved fiscal year 2014 funding legislation that totals $34.773 billion, which is $1.96 billion below the fiscal year 2013 enacted level. The bill, which funds the Army Corps of Engineers, the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Reclamation, and the Department of Energy, provides critical investments in water infrastructure, clean and alternative energy sources, and national security activities related to nuclear weapons modernization and preventing nuclear terrorism.
House panel approves 2014 Energy spending bill
Erik Wasson, The Hill
June 26, 2013
The full House Appropriations Committee on Wednesday approved a 2014 Energy and Water spending bill with deep cuts to renewable energy projects on a party-line 28-21 vote.
The committee beat back Democratic attempts to restore spending on renewable energy, a key priority for President Obama, which would be cut to $1 billion, a reduction of $911 million compared to 2013.
The cut comes as part of an Energy and Water appropriations bill, the fifth that the House is moving as part of a plan to produce all 12 annual spending bills at the top-line $967 billion level called for under the sequestration law.
This plan is sharply at odds with that of Senate Democrats meaning that without a wider congressional budget deal, none of the bill are likely to be enacted into law. President Obama has threatened to veto all the House bills produced conforming to the $967 billion level.
The bill totals $30.4 billion, which is $2.9 billion below 2013 enacted level and $700 million below the sequestration level that went into effect on March 1.
"The end product is a good bill and one that I heartily endorse," said Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) "This bill gets back to the basics -- protecting our national defense and investing in the infrastructure that is the foundation of a thriving American economy and critical to the safety of our people."
Ranking member Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) noted that a year ago, the same committee wanted $700 million more for renewable energy.
"We should continue -- not stall -- progress toward clean and renewable energy that will power economic growth, increase energy security and mitigate the risk of climate change," she said.
In addition to the renewable energy program cuts, the House GOP plan would also require steep cuts to the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), a program authorized in 2007 legislation that first received funding under the 2009 stimulus law.
ARPA-E funds so-called high-risk, high-reward research into cutting-edge, breakthrough energy technologies.
"It is our job to make do with what we have not with what we hope to have," Energy subcommittee Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.) said.
Senate OKs Macfarlane for full term as nuke safety chief
Ben Geman, The Hill
June 28, 2013
The Senate on Thursday approved Allison Macfarlane to a full five-year term as chairwoman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the agency that oversees the nation's nuclear power plants.
Macfarlane first took the NRC's helm last summer when she replaced former chairman Gregory Jaczko, who stepped down after a rocky tenure.
She is a geologist and former professor of environmental science and policy at George Mason University. Macfarlane's current term expires June 30.
Two Separate NRC Efforts Address Spent Fuel Safety
NRC
June 24, 2013
Today, the NRC is making publicly available four documents relating to the safe storage of spent nuclear fuel. The first three represent the agency's work to date on revising its waste confidence rule and analyzing the environmental effects of extended spent fuel storage. The fourth is a draft study examining whether earlier transfer of spent fuel from pools to dry cask storage would significantly reduce risks to public health and safety.
Although both waste confidence and the spent fuel pool study discuss the safety of spent fuel, these are two separate efforts with distinct goals. So we wanted to explain the processes here on the blog to help avoid confusion.
The waste confidence documents represent a major milestone in the NRC's effort to address last year's U.S. Appeals Court decision striking down our waste confidence rule. The court directed the agency to analyze the environmental effects of never having a permanent repository for the nation's commercial spent fuel, as well as the effects of spent fuel pool leaks and fires.
The three waste confidence documents being posted today on the NRC website are:
These documents are now before the Commission and are being made publicly available under standard agency procedure. The Commission may approve, modify or disapprove these documents, so we are not yet seeking public comments. We hope to publish them officially for comment in late August or early September, but that timeframe depends on Commission approval.
When they are published, the 75-day official public comment period will begin. During that period, we will hold 10 public meetings around the country to present the proposed rule and draft GEIS and receive your comments. Two of these meetings will be at NRC headquarters in Rockville, Md. The rest will be in New York, Massachusetts, Colorado, southern California, central California, Minnesota, Ohio, and North Carolina.
Details will be announced closer to the dates on the NRC's public meetings webpage and the waste confidence webpage.
The spent fuel pool study is being published for public comment. A Federal Register notice to be published soon will set a 30-day deadline and explain how to submit comments.
The NRC began this study after the Fukushima nuclear accident in March 2011. Although the spent fuel pools at Fukushima did not fail, the accident sparked debate in this country over whether it might be safer to transfer spent fuel from pools to dry cask storage sooner than is the norm.
The study considered a pool at a boiling-water reactor with Mark 1 containment (the type used at Fukushima and 23 U.S. reactors) and an earthquake several times stronger than the pool was designed to withstand. It examined both a "full" pool and one with less fuel and more space between the assemblies, with and without emergency procedures to add water to the pool in the unlikely event an earthquake causes the pool to drain.
The pool study and the waste confidence review are separate efforts. The draft GEIS does not explicitly reference the pool study, though the waste confidence staff worked closely with the staff preparing the pool study while developing relevant chapters of the draft GEIS. If a final version of the study is published before the final waste confidence GEIS, the staff will incorporate a reference to it in the final GEIS.
These four documents represent two distinct NRC efforts on one very important subject: the safe storage of spent fuel and its environmental impacts. We look forward to your comments on the draft spent fuel pool study now, and on the waste confidence proposed rule and draft environmental study in the fall.
Quarrels Continue Over Repository for Nuclear Waste
Matthew L. Wald, The New York Times
June 27, 2013
WASHINGTON -- As more nuclear reactors across the country are closed, the problem of what to do with their waste is becoming more urgent, government officials and private experts said at a conference here this week.
To address the problem, a bipartisan group of four senators introduced a bill on Thursday that would provide for temporary, centralized storage, even as House leaders remained focused on trying to revive plans for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository that the Obama administration has declared dead.
Nuclear waste is accumulating in steel and concrete storage casks at reactor sites around the country. But the casks -- sealed boxes of many tons -- cannot be sent to any repository because they are not compatible, said Jeff Williams, director of the Energy Department's Nuclear Fuel Storage and Transportation Planning Project.
In addition, a growing number of the sites no longer have an operating reactor or the associated fuel-handling equipment, so they have no way to move the highly radioactive fuel to another storage package.
Experts say the amount of orphaned nuclear waste is mounting. Nuclear utilities have announced the retirement of an additional four reactors so far this year, which leaves three more sites without an operating reactor. Before that development, the Energy Department counted nine such sites, with about 2,800 tons of fuel in 248 casks and was hoping to establish a pilot-scale interim storage plant for that fuel.
Stored fuel requires guards and other continuing expenses, which are significant if there is no reactor nearby. Those expenses eventually fall on federal taxpayers because the Energy Department has defaulted on contracts it signed in the 1980s to begin accepting the wastes for burial in 1998. As a result, financial penalties the federal government must pay to the nuclear utilities for failing to dispose of the waste now amount to hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
Even the concept of an interim site is facing problems -- not least a law that bars the use of an interim site until construction has begun at Yucca.
Selecting and opening a new site for permanent disposal would most likely take decades at least, so finding a place for storage in the meantime may strain the definition of "interim." Solving the interim problem is in turn difficult if there is no long-term solution on the horizon.
"We understand the idea that you can't pick up fuel stranded in many locations to ultimately have it stranded in one location," said Christopher Hansen, a senior policy adviser in the Energy Department's Office of Nuclear Energy.
A commission investigating storage alternatives recommended last year that the government find a willing host, which it called a "consent-based process." The recommendation is in contrast to Congress's choice of Yucca in 1987, over the objections of the host state, Nevada.
But what exactly consent-based means is not clear. Mark Lombard, the director of spent fuel storage and transportation at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which would have to license a permanent repository or an interim storage site, said, "We're pretty good at solving technical issues. It's the consent-based process that's a little bit squishy."
And some of the technical questions will take time, including development of rail cars that can safely hold the casks, experts said.
The government has currently paid out about $2 billion in damages, and its liability is rising by hundreds of millions of dollars a year. If the government could establish an interim site, it could limit its penalties to about $21 billion, said Lake Barrett, a former Energy Department official.
But that schedule is ambitious, according to participants in the conference, which was organized by a trade group, the United States Nuclear Infrastructure Council. How long the fuel can safely sit in the casks, either at the 120 or so locations where nuclear reactors have ever operated, or at a smaller number of centralized spots, is the subject of a separate proceeding at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The commission has long maintained that the fuel is safe there for decades, but some of it has already been stored for more than 30 years, and it seems certain to be stored there for decades more.
Some of the younger fuel shows signs of degrading with age. The reason is that in the 1990s, many of the reactors made a transition to fuel assemblies with a rich enough mix of uranium to run for up to six years, instead of the three years that had been standard. The new fuel, called "high burn-up fuel," spent longer in the harsh environment of a reactor, and now shows signs of corrosion and cracking.
On Nuclear Waste Bill, Senators Look to Public for Help
Matthew L. Wald, The New York Times
June 28, 2013
LINK
After the Obama administration abandoned plans in 2009 to bury nuclear waste at a repository in Nevada's Yucca Mountain, a spot chosen by leading senators more than 20 years earlier, a study commission recommended that a new location be picked through "a consent-based process."
On Thursday, a group of senators introduced a bill, the Nuclear Waste Administration Act, that would establish such a process, based in part on public comments solicited online by the bill's sponsors -- a practice generally reserved for rules proposed by federal agencies. Call it consent-based legislation.
"The Senate did something highly unusual," said Per F. Peterson, a professor of nuclear engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and a public policy expert. He said the way the legislation was developed resembled the process used by the study commission, which held hearings around the country. Taking public comment "establishes a strong foundation for the legislation to be successful if passed by the Senate and then by the House,'' he said.
Others are not so optimistic. In the House, there is still strong support for trying to revive the Yucca plan, first proposed in 1987. That effort would depend on the outcome of a lawsuit heard by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in May 2012. The three judges have not yet ruled.
But the Congressional process thus far has been stunning compared with the process in 1987. At that time, senators from other states that had potential sites, including Texas, Louisiana and Washington, cut a deal to choose Nevada, which was unable to fight it off. After Senator Harry Reid of Nevada became the Democratic leader, though, he cut off funding and the consensus fell apart.
Under the new bill, a new federal agency would be empowered to cut a deal with a state and local governments, subject to approval by Congress. It does not define the elements of such a deal, but the expectation is that the government would offer what amounted to a handsome dowry for an ugly bride: money for roads, universities or other goodies.
In the interim, the bill would allow above-ground storage of nuclear waste in a central location, a temporary resolution to a problem that has arisen as reactors retire and the waste is orphaned.
The bill was introduced by Senators Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California and chairwoman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development; Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the subcommittee's ranking Republican; Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon and chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee; and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, the ranking Republican member.
Congress leaves town for the Fourth of July recess on Friday, but the Senate could take up the measure later this year.
Yes We Can - Dispose Of Nuclear Waste
James Conca, Forbes
June 30, 2013
Last Thursday was an historic day for the Nation. Congress took the first step in adopting a rational and achievable nuclear waste disposal plan that would reverse the catatonic state of our existing nuclear program.
Senators Feinstein (D-CA) and Alexander (R-TN), the leaders of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water, and Senators Wyden (D-OR) and Murkowski (R-AK) Chairman and Ranking Member of Energy and Natural Resources, just introduced the Nuclear Waste Administration Act of 2013 (S. 1240).
The NWAA creates a new and independent Nuclear Waste Administration to manage nuclear waste, construct an interim storage facility(s) and site a permanent waste repository through a consent-based process. All of this will be funded by on-going fees collected from nuclear power ratepayers (the Nuclear Waste Fund).
These three tasks were the backbone of recommendations made last year by the President's Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future (the BRC), an entity formed to develop a path forward after Yucca Mountain was halted.
In this bill, the NWA Administrator is given tremendous flexibility in negotiating compacts with state, local, and tribal governments. Governors become the primary state officials responsible for entering into agreements with the NWA. Only after most issues are settled does ratification by Congress occur. Presumably at that point it will be a no-brainer.
But Dr. Per Peterson, professor of nuclear engineering at UC Berkeley, and a member of the original BRC, thinks this bill is much more important than just addressing our nuclear waste issues. It is a pioneering way for Congress to craft policy and law with public input in just the consensus manner we need to fix our broken government. "What the BRC has done", says Per, "is to create the potential to fundamentally alter a basic element of how our nation governs itself."
This is because the NWAA S. 1240 was a first-of-a-kind experiment by the Senate Energy committee who issued a discussion draft of this legislation for public comment last April. They received more than 2,500 public comments on the measure, and then acted on those comments to create and introduce a consensus draft bill. As Matt Wald of the NYTimes calls it, consent-based legislation (The Caucus). This has never happened before.
In a reasonable world, such open publically-discussed legislation should allow the bill to sail through both Houses since there should be no surprises, and most issues would be dealt with during the process. I hope we still live in a reasonable world.
The stakes could not be higher. If this bill does pass, then legislative discussion drafts could become the normal approach in reaching public policy decisions on important and controversial topics using the consensus that the BRC strove so hard to outline.
On the other hand, if this NWAA cannot pass the Senate and then the House, it will demonstrate how useless it is to issue a discussion draft of important legislation for public comment, and we will remain stuck in the Sisyphean trap that our legislative process has become.
Reactions across the country were mixed. The American Nuclear Society commended the Senators for this critical legislation and for their willingness to engage the scientific and technical community in its development (ANS Commends Senate).
Others were a little lost, not surprising since this subject is about as clear as tar-sands oil. CBS Las Vegas said this bill would grandfather the licensing process for the Yucca Mountain site. Not really. Steven Tetreault, also in Las Vegas, said, "the new nuclear waste bill doesn't repeal Yucca Mountain".
Kind of.
While technically true, these miss the point that in a consensus approach, nothing is ever dead, just off the table, like Yucca Mountain. But Yucca Mountain is still important to this process. We need Yucca Mountain, if only on paper, to satisfy the retrievability window issue posed in the 1982 Nuclear waste Policy Act that began this lemmings march we've been on for over 30 years. We need Yucca Mountain on paper as a theoretical option so we don't have to completely rewrite the NWPA.
But we will never use Yucca Mountain because its choice was the antithesis to a concensus approach, forced on the State of Nevada in a manner that screamed coercion. The intention of this new bill is to reverse that top-down mindset and open it up to true and unrestricted negotiation from the bottom up. And that solves the issues as it goes. The NWA would have the authority and the funding to do just that.
The Energy and Natural Resources Committee is planning a hearing on the bill in July. The ball is in Congress' court. After all, they do run this country...if only they would act.
Frank Munger: Cleanup a big deal for environment, economy
Frank Munger, Knoxville News
July 1, 2013
It's not sexy science (although it can be at times) and it's not weapons production, but environmental cleanup continues to be a big part of Oak Ridge's economic impact on the region and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.
Back in the 1980s and even into the 1990s, folks thought the cleanup of the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge reservation might be completed by now. But, perhaps, that might have been a little wishful thinking, a lack of understanding about the extent and breadth of contamination, or an overly ambitious view of the government funding that would be available to do the work. Plus, nobody was talking much about demolishing all the buildings at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Y-12 National Security Complex and the former K-25 uranium-enrichment plant, where the most extraordinary demolition projects are taking place.
The new date on the horizon for completing the Oak Ridge cleanup campaign is 2047.
The previous timeline showed the cleanup getting done by 2036, but the general trend of declining funds for DOE's environmental management program -- as well as something called sequestration -- generated a new target date. DOE's Oak Ridge team negotiated the extension with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation.
Over the years, the state has been pretty flexible in working with DOE regarding environmental regulations and accommodating delays of some of the complex cleanup tasks. More recently, Tennessee officials have felt that DOE was giving greater funding priority to cleanup programs at federal sites in other states.
In a June 13 letter to DOE's Oak Ridge cleanup chief Mark Whitney, TDEC's remediation director -- Robert A. Binford -- said the state wanted to express its support for DOE's budget planning for fiscal year 2015 (budget proposals are assembled years in advance).
Binford noted that the EPA, TDEC and DOE had collaborated on a strategic cleanup plan and a "set of risk-based priorities" for cleanup in Oak Ridge.
Among those is finishing the demolition and cleanup of the K-25 building, making major strides to reduce mercury discharges at Y-12 and developing a strategy that recognizes the need for monitoring of groundwater beyond the boundaries of DOE's Oak Ridge reservation.
In years to come, enormous projects are to be tackled -- including the demolition of mercury-laden buildings at Y-12 and the removal of old nuclear reactors at the lab. It appears that another nuclear landfill will need to be built to accommodate the wastes.
Current funding for cleanup programs in Oak Ridge is about $400 million annually, down a bit from the $500 million-plus that was the norm a few years ago and down sizably from the funding Oak Ridge folks once dreamed of getting after DOE finished other big cleanup projects at Cold War nuclear sites around the United States.
According to Binford's letter, the final completion date of 2047 is based on "level funding" from FY 2013 to FY 2018, with an assumption of 2.5 percent escalation after that until the job is done. That is what's been established in the three-party agreement known as the Federal Facilities Agreement.
Billions of dollars have been invested in Oak Ridge environmental efforts since pollution began to get its due attention in the early 1980s. Based on some of the budget numbers mentioned above, it's pretty clear that additional billions of dollars will be needed to get the job completed.
That's a big deal, environmentally and economically.
GAO: NNSA Laboratories' Indirect Cost Management Has Improved, but Additional Opportunities Exist
GAO
June 28, 2013
The National Nuclear Security Administration's (NNSA) management and operating (M&O) contractors differ in how they classify and allocate indirect costs at NNSA laboratories. Although different approaches are allowed by Cost Accounting Standards, these differences limit the ability to compare program costs across the laboratories. Recognizing the limitations of its current cost data, the Department of Energy (DOE) and NNSA are implementing the Institutional Cost Reporting initiative intended to create a standardized report of certain costs, including many indirect costs. However, DOE is uncertain how it will use the data gathered by this initiative, and these efforts may provide only limited improvements because the data will continue to only be reported at an aggregate level.
NNSA examines M&O contractors' models for allocating indirect costs for compliance with Cost Accounting Standards' requirements at least annually, which helps ensure accuracy. NNSA has identified instances when these models did not comply with these requirements, but NNSA has worked with M&O contractors to address these issues. NNSA generally relies on the M&O contractors' internal audits, however, to assess whether M&O contractors' day-to-day cost allocation practices conform to disclosed cost allocation models. NNSA reviews some summary data to independently assess day-to-day compliance with Cost Accounting Standards but does not conduct independent audits. DOE's Office of Inspector General (OIG) has audit authority at NNSA laboratories. OIG officials stated that the frequency and scope for conducting audits to assess contractors' compliance with Cost Accounting Standards should be based on the level of risk. However, NNSA and OIG officials and M&O contractors hold varying opinions regarding the level of risk that inaccurate indirect cost allocation practices at the laboratories pose. In the absence of formal, periodic risk assessments, NNSA may not have a well-documented basis for its decisions regarding the type, timing, and extent of future monitoring or oversight.
NNSA reviews M&O contractors' cost data and other information to assess the reasonableness of their costs, including indirect costs. NNSA also uses other means to help ensure the reasonableness of these costs. For example, NNSA's contracts require M&O contractors to regularly benchmark their costs to other contractors and industry. These requirements, however, do not specify the areas that should be examined, how frequently benchmarking should occur, and what process should be used for implementing any needed corrective actions. As a result, M&O contractor efforts to benchmark costs varied across laboratories.
DOE IG: Mitigation of Natural Disasters at Los Alamos National Laboratory
DOE IG
June 24, 2013
Los Alamos National Laboratory (Los Alamos) is at some risk of seismic events and susceptible to forest fires, including those started by lightning. Since 2000, there have been two major forest fires that threatened Los Alamos.
Although Los Alamos had made progress in upgrading existing nuclear facilities, concerns remained regarding the mitigation of risks related to natural disasters. Specifically, we found seismic issues affecting the Plutonium Facility that remain to be addressed. Additionally, we found that fire protection and prevention vulnerabilities in Area G Waste Storage and Disposal Facility (Area G) continue to exist. Further, we found that several known risks exist with compensatory measures implemented in Area G that may lessen their efficacy in mitigating natural disasters. Los Alamos' processes and procedures have not always been fully effective in ensuring that hazards, including natural disasters, are fully analyzed and effectively mitigated.
National Nuclear Security Administration officials responsible for overseeing Los Alamos pointed out that decisions to budget and schedule mitigation measures are based on factors including the probability of an event occurring, such as a seismic event, and whether a structure is considered to be a permanent or limited life facility. While a number of compensatory and corrective actions have been completed, in our view, further actions are needed to mitigate existing vulnerabilities. Management concurred with the report's recommendations and indicated that corrective actions have been or would be initiated to mitigate potential risks.
UK's nuclear clean-up programme to cost billions more than expected
Terry Macalister, The Guardian
June 23, 2013
The public body charged with overseeing the dismantling of Britain's network of atomic power and research stations will reveal on Monday that its estimates for the lifetime cost of the programme has risen by billions of pounds.
Despite this, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) will say in its annual report that it is getting to grips with the clean-up problem because the rate of cost growth is slowing year-on-year.
Yet the soaring costs will alarm industry critics at a time when the government is trying to encourage construction of a new generation of atomic power plants while plans to construct a permanent home for high-level radioactive waste are stalled.
In the NDA's 2011 annual report the provisional cost of dealing with the UK's nuclear legacy was put at £53bn, compared with a 2010 figure of £49bn. The new number in the 2012 set of accounts is expected to be around £55bn. But under previous accounting methods, the figure historically used has risen to well over £80bn with some predicting the final bill could exceed £100bn.
Soaring costs have already caused serious tensions with the private contractors who manage the NDA's most financially demanding site, Sellafield in Cumbria, and put pressure on a second private clean-up contract for old Magnox power stations scheduled to be awarded next year.
The NDA declined to predict the latest figure for lifetime clean-up costs, saying only "we are publishing these numbers on June 24 with our annual report", but it confirmed it is looking at the future of the Sellafield clean-up contract with fresh eyes.
The contract with Nuclear Management Partners (NMP) - a consortium made up of British company Amec and Areva of France and led by URS of the US- was first signed in 2010 for five years with an option to roll it over for up to 17 years at a total cost of more than £22bn.
The NDA is now in talks with NMP, with the possibility it could re-tender the contract to outside parties before its first break point in March 2014 or even take Sellafield management back into state hands, at least for a temporary period.
NMP said it was still "hopeful" of retaining the contract but admitted it had not been without problems so far. "There have been some achievements but this is a complicated site and there are always room for improvements," a consortium spokesman said.
The image of NMP was not improved when Sellafield Ltd, the name the consortium operates under in Cumbria, received a £700,000 fine from a court in Carlisle earlier this month for dumping low-level radioactive waste in a local landfill site.
The MP for Copeland, Jamie Reed, has recently written to the NDA and copied in the prime minister, questioning the suitability of NMP continuing to run Sellafield, the biggest nuclear site in Europe.
In February, the public accounts committee in parliament heavily criticised NMP for "dithering and delay" and pointed out it had received £54m in performance-related fees last year despite only two out of the 14 major projects at the site being on track. The National Audit Office made similar criticisms in November amid suggestions that the final clean-up cost at Sellafield alone could eventually reach £67.5bn.
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