Recommendation 27

Delivering the benefits intended from the new arrangements will require a clear long- term delivery strategy. The current EDFE approach for these stations involves putting reactor buildings into a state of care and maintenance lasting some decades to allow radioactivity levels to decay before starting deconstruction of the reactor. The NDA will have to decide the long-term decommissioning strategy for the AGR stations. The NDA told us that it its approach for its Magnox stations has moved away from care and maintenance “across the board” to a bespoke plan for each reactor where deconstruction of the reactor can start earlier. For some of the Magnox stations radioactivity levels have decayed more quickly than previously modelled enabling the NDA to get on with the decommissioning task.44 The NDA told us that it will decide the appropriate decommissioning strategy for the AGR stations on a case-by-case basis as it builds its understanding of these stations. It did not expect to be able to take a decision until “some time” after the stations transferred.45 Oversight of the AGR decommissioning programme