England is expected to announced Tuesday that it will fire a consortium of British, French and American companies from cleanup work at the Sellafield nuclear facility in Cumbria in the northwest of the country, canceling their $30.2 billion decommissioning contract.
The decision to “ax” the Nuclear Management Partners consortium made up of Amec of Britain, Areva of France and URS, an American company, comes six years into a 17-year contract, The Telegraph reported Monday.
The contract was almost canceled last year, when NMP was criticized by the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee. Rising costs are a major concern, but among the problems encountered was the accidental shipping of radioactive waste to a landfill, which resulted in a fine of more than $1 million.
Despite the problems, members of parliament hesitated to tear up the contract last year in part because of concerns about the government's ability to get the decommissioning job done, the Telegraph said.
Project expenses have reached $2.7 billion annually. While this represents the active decommissioning work, the bill for keeping the Sellafield site safe over the next 100 years has been estimated at $119.6 billion.
“We understand that the NDA has been considering whether there are alternative options to the current arrangements for managing Sellafield. It is not possible for us to make any further comment at this time,” said NMP general manager Iain Irving.