Sellafield
Posted: 22nd March 2025
House Of Commons Public Accounts Committee: Decommissioning Sellafield. Admissions that Seafield is the most dangerous place in the U.K. and an accident involving the high activity waste storage tanks would be catastrophic. Witness(es): Clive Maxwell, Second Permanent Secretary, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero; Lee McDonough, Director General, Net Zero, Nuclear and International, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero; David Peattie, Group Chief Executive Officer, Nuclear Decommissioning Authority; Kate Bowyer, Chief Financial Officer, Nuclear Decommissioning Authority; Euan Hutton, Chief Executive, Sellafield Ltd
Parliament TV 20th March 2025
Nuclear whistleblowers who try to draw attention to cultural and safety issues face bullying, MPs have warned. Members of parliament’s public accounts committee have said they are concerned about the way people who raise concerns about culture and safety on nuclear sites are treated. “There is generally a problem with whistleblowing and a safety culture,” said Rachel Gilmour, a Liberal Democrat MP, when quizzing nuclear bosses on Thursday. “That relation between bullying and safety within a nuclear context” needs greater examination, Gilmour said, adding that her office was seeking to raise the issue further with regulators. The Guardian’s Nuclear Leaks investigation has revealed claims of bullying, sexual harassment and drug use at the nuclear waste dump, Sellafield, which could put safety at risk. Gilmour’s interjection followed a refusal by Euan Hutton, the chief executive of the Sellafield site, to apologise for its treatment of an HR consultant, Alison McDermott, when asked to by Anna Dixon, a Labour MP. Hutton also refused to say whether he considered the cost of the case against McDermott to be a good use of public funds.
Guardian 20th March 2025
Operators working from the Westlakes Science Park in Whitehaven, around eight miles from Sellafield, remotely operated “safely and securely” a custom Boston Dynamics Spot Quadrupedal Robot ‘dog’ that could carry out tasks such as remote inspections, data gathering and clean-up work. Energy generation at the plant stopped in 2003, but the painstaking decommissioning process typically takes decades and presents radioactive hazards to workers. Sellafield is unusual in that the decommissioning challenge also encompasses early nuclear research and nuclear weapons programmes that took place on the site. The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) is not expecting full site remediation to be completed until 2125.
Engineering & Technology 20th March 2025