Annual Report for 2010/11 and Forward Programme - Sellafield Ltd

SSEM/2011/4730 June 2011From 2008/09 onwards, the annual cost of external contracts and SL EnvironmentalManagement staff required to deliver the particles work programme has been in excess of£1M. This excludes the costs to SL for internal laboratory services and for costs that arerecovered from SL by the Environment Agency. If charged to this work directly, internallaboratory costs are estimated to be approximately £100 per beach find. With over 1300beach finds to date, internal analysis is estimated to have cost in excess of £130,000 to date.SL does not receive a detailed breakdown of the costs recovered by EA to cover regulationof the site and its operations. These costs include the time spent by individual Inspectors andcover the costs of contracts that EA award (eg the HPA Risk Assessment). It is estimatedthat these charges could add between £150,000 and £250,000 per year.The most significant area of spend to date has been the cost of the contract for beachmonitoring operations. Even with the introduction of a reduced area monitoring programmefor 2011/12, this element still represents close to £0.5M per year. Other significant costscover the external analysis that SL is having carried out under contract. For 2010/11 thecontract awarded for transport and dispersion modelling for offshore particles would havetaken spending for that year over £1.5M. The collapse of that contract resulted in a costreduction, although the total spend was still in excess of £1M.For 2011/12, the budget for the year is again in excess of £1M, reflecting the significantamount of work that continues. As SL moves towards award of an offshore monitoringcontract estimated costs will rise sharply, with current estimates for 2012/13 potentiallyresulting in a doubling of the current costs, to in excess of £2M. Offshore monitoring itselfhas the potential to see these values rise even further. These forecasted increases need tobe considered against the backdrop of enhanced financial constraints that are currently beingapplied across all government spending. Each year Sellafield Ltd evaluates the total costs torun the site and the deliver the various projects required to safely operate a site of this sizeand complexity. Particles in the Environment, is one of many work streams that must beassessed against site priorities; and where funding allocation needs to be cognisant ofproportionality in terms of hazard and risk reduction.© Nuclear Decommissioning Authority 2011. 114