As if the United Kingdom didn't have enough nuclear woes with the reconsideration of the mammoth Hinkley Point C nuclear project following the Brexit vote, now a British court has handed down a ruling against the British Nuclear Decommissioning Authority that could result in multi-million dollar lawsuits with respect to the decommissioning of old UK reactors.
The NDA is a division of the British Department of Energy and Climate Change. It was created in 2004 and began operations in 2005. "Its purpose is to deliver the decommissioning and clean-up of the UK’s civil nuclear legacy in a safe and cost-effective manner, and where possible to accelerate programs of work that reduce hazard." It does not manage British nuclear sites directly but works through what are called "site license" companies to oversee the cleanup process.
In 2008, the NDA awarded a contract extension for the cleanup of the Sellafield site where nuclear weapons were developed to Nuclear Management Partners. After serious problems with the execution of the contract, NMP lost the contract in 2015 and NDA was criticized for its performance in the award and monitoring of the contract.
In 2014, the NDA held a competition to select a contractor to decommission twelve of the UK's aging nuclear power reactors. This represents half of the twenty five operating power reactors in the U.K. The winner of the seven billion dollar contact was a joint venture between Babcock and Fluor called Cavendish Fluor Partnership.
The other contractors involved in the bid competition complained that the contract had not be fairly awarded and Energy Solutions, a company that managed one of the nuclear power plants for fourteen years, brought suit against the NDA.
A British court has just handed down a verdict that agrees with Energy Solutions. The court found that the NDA had deliberately manipulated the data for evaluating bids in order to prevent the disqualification of Cavendish Fluor Partnership. The judge ruled that the NDA had fallen short of meeting its obligations for transparency and equal judgement. Cavendish Fluor lost the contract.
Bechtel, a US contractor which also bid on the cleanup project said that it would soon sue NDA for lost future earnings expected from the contract. Other nuclear contractors involved in the competitions such as Ch2MHill, Serco, CAS Restoration Partnership, and UK Nuclear Restoration are expected to also file suit against the NDA.
Given its less than stellar performance in the past decade, the competence of the NDA has been called into question. This sort of incompetence and corruption in a public agency is always of grave concern but when the projects it is involved in include the dangerous work of decommissioning old nuclear power plants, such incompetence and corruption poses a serious threat to the citizens of Britain and their environment.
The U.K. rates as tenth least corrupt country out of one hundred and seventy countries. If this is the best that can be expected from one of the least corrupt countries in the world, then perhaps nuclear power is not safe power source for most of the nations in the world which are more corrupt.
