Download or read book Taking forward decommissioning written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2008-01-30 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This NAO report examines the process of decommissioning of the UK's nuclear power stations and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority's performance in using contracts to take forward decommissioning of the various sites, since April 2005, along with what lessons can be learnt. By December 2007, 14 facilities had already shut down and were in the process of being decommissioned. Current plans envisage that most of these sites will be cleared over a 100-year period, at the current estimated cost of £61 billion. The NDA's estimate of the undiscounted future costs of sites over the remaining lifetime, £73 billion, was almost £17 billion higher than the estimate made by the Department in 2003. The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority itself was established on 1 April 2005 to ensure the safe and efficient clean-up of the UK's first generation of civil public sector nuclear facilities, with responsibility for 19 sites. Command Paper (Cm. 5552, Managing the Nuclear Legacy, ISBN 9780101555227), which was published in 2002, set out broadly the Government's structure for taking forward decommissioning by allowing competition. The NAO has set out a number of recommendations, including: that the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority should develop its current contract incentives; that the Authority should strengthen its capacity to scrutinise cost estimates; that the authority should determine the reasons for the continuing increases in cost estimates submitted by sites; that the Authority should evaluate the risks from more commercial management of its sites and develop clear and transparent measures of the progress of decommissioning; that the Authority should require site licensees to prepare lifetime plans on the most realistic available funding assumptions.