NDA update

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Monday, 07 August 2006

The Energy Bill has now had Royal Assent and is on the statute books as the Energy Act 2004. The Act provides the legal framework under which the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority will be established and will pave the way for the acceleration of decommissioning work in the UK. The Energy Bill has now had Royal Assent and is on the statute books as the Energy Act 2004. The Act provides the legal framework under which the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority will be established and will pave the way for the acceleration of decommissioning work in the UK. However, perhaps the more important development with regard to the NDA has been announced by the Chancellor as part of his spending review. Firstly Mr Brown has confirmed that the NDA will have an initial budget of £2billion a year for the first three years of its operation. Outlining government spending plans for the financial years 2005/06 to 2007/08 Mr Brown said that the Government was strongly committed to the successful creation of an effective, safe and efficient market for nuclear remediation. Of the £2billion per annum budget, over £1billion will be allocated through the DTI's departmental expenditure limit. The remainder will come from central government grant and income from the NDA's commercial activities. The second announcement was released in his accompanying Public Service Agreement White Paper, which confirmed the Government's intention to have competitively tendered the tier 1 contracts for the management of at least half of the registered nuclear sites by 2008. Ministers hope to reduce total UK liabilities by 10% by 2010 and to get 2% efficiency savings per year on decommissioning from 2006/07. In the meantime Sir Anthony Cleaver has been appointed as Chairman of the NDA. The Chief Executive and the rest of the board are expected to be appointed in the near future and the NDA should be running in shadow form by October ready to start operation in April 2005 as planned.

 

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