A groundbreaking plan has been published that sets out the long term future of the Sellafield site.

The Sellafield Performance Plan has been compiled over the past two years under the guidance of Nuclear Management Partners (NMP), owners of the Site Licence Company. It is the first credible and underpinned lifetime plan for the Sellafield site and details the forward programme of operations, construction projects and decommissioning.

NMP Chairman Tom Zarges hailed the plan as a major milestone for the site, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and the nuclear industry in general. He added: "We have applied our world leading expertise over the past two years to producing this plan and we are fully committed to delivering the promises made in it.


"By working much more efficiently and effectively than has historically been the norm at Sellafield we will achieve true value for money to our customer, to the UK government and to the UK taxpayer."

Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) Chief Executive Tony Fountain added: "We chose Nuclear Management Partners to run Sellafield Limited in 2008 and they have spent the first two years of their contract learning the site and identifying issues so that they could give us a true picture of its operations and decommissioning timescales."

The Performance Plan also provides information crucial to the economic development of West Cumbria. Acceleration of the decommissioning programme at Sellafield means higher levels of employment than would otherwise have been the case. So, while the manpower profiles presented in the performance plan do indicate a long term decrease in workforce at Sellafield, this is a much more gradual reduction over a significantly longer time period than had originally been predicted in earlier plans.

(CD)