A recent seminar by the UK’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) has revealed details of the Sellafield site management contract, covering operations at the sprawling Cumbria location.
The Sellafield site management contract is valued at approximately £1 billion
($2 billion) per year with a 4% annual fee of around £40 million ($80 million) over 5 years, totaling £5 billion ($10 billion) turnover and £200 million ($400 million) in fees.
The contract length is initially five years but NDA chief executive Ian Roxburgh plans a longer term relationship probably comprising of three five and a two year contracts, market tested at 5 year intervals running 2009-26.
NDA Engineer Clive Nixon later indicated a four phase programme for the clean-up of Sellafield including site passivation up to 2016, consolidation phase, quiescent phase and restoration phase from 2040 to 2120.
The contract appointment is expected by September 2008.
BNFL chief executive Mike Parker announced that BNFL/BNG will not be bidding for the future Sellafield site management contract when the current transitional site management contract expires in March 2009.
In related news it has emerged that traces of radioactivity in a cooling water stream from the Evaporator Supporting Magnox operations - used to process effluents from both the THORP and Magnox Reprocessing plants and the three vitrification lines - is expected to keep the plant offline until the new year.
As a result the THORP reprocessing plant is now unlikely to reopen before the end of the financial year at the end of March 2007.
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