Editorial

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The Government's spending review announcement on 12 July has confirmed one of the least well kept secrets for some time; namely funding of around £2bn per annum over the next 3 years for the NDA. The Government's spending review announcement on 12 July has confirmed one of the least well kept secrets for some time; namely funding of around £2bn per annum over the next 3 years for the NDA. The Energy Act received royal assent at the end of July and the NDA will therefore be up and running in time for next April under its Chairman Sir Anthony Cleaver, making a welcome return to this industry. Decommissioning therefore moves from a sporadic site by site activity to a much needed and properly funded national programme. The emphasis now shifts from dialogue to delivery. For 50 years we have relied for such projects on monopoly public bodies charged with delivering strategic government objectives. Oversight and accountability were essentially internal and opaque, and there was a history of technological and professional excellence at the expense of commercial and economic excellence. All that began to change with the deregulation and privatisation agenda of the Thatcher government. The NDA is the latest stage in that process, interposing separate and detached ownership, oversight, accountability and regulation. Accountability should certainly be external and transparent as a result. Whether the more significant objectives of technological and organisational innovation and value for money are actually achieved will depend on the nature of the competitive arrangements the NDA now puts in place, the calibre of its staff, the quality of its DTI/LMU inheritance, and the balance it achieves between building on past experience while encouraging new entrants and ideas. It is too early of course to make judgements but the signs are good. It may seem premature to welcome the NDA to the industry but the Act is now in force and by the time the NDA is formally constituted next April any welcome will simply be pass�. So I welcome now and at last the beginning of a significant decommissioning programme under the NDA both in its own right and because it clears one of the key hurdles to a new future for the wider nuclear industry. Tony Cooper NIA Chairman

 

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