Recommendation 2

The targets set for Sellafield Ltd neither support DESNZ and the NDA in holding it to account for poor performance, nor allow Sellafield Ltd to demonstrate it is making meaningful progress towards addressing the site’s hazards. In recent years, Sellafield Ltd has missed its most important hazard reduction targets more often than it has achieved them, often by considerable margins. While carrying out work safely must come first, safety cannot be used as a ‘get out of jail free card’ to excuse poor performance. We do not believe that the current target–setting process allows DESNZ and the NDA to distinguish between legitimate reasons for missing a target and underperformance on the part of Sellafield Ltd. Additionally, these annual targets do not allow Sellafield Ltd to show it 3 will be able to pick up the pace in future years in order to achieve the ‘key decommissioning milestones’ it has agreed with its regulators (some of which are decades away). These milestones mark a step–change reduction in the hazard buildings pose. To achieve them, Sellafield Ltd needs to fundamentally transform how the site functions – for example, in the case of MSSS, it wants to be removing 24 times as much waste as it did in 2023–24 within a decade. recommendation a. Sellafield Ltd should publish a set of medium–term targets which demonstrate it is on track to complete key activities within its assumed ‘strategic tolerances’. This should contain sufficient detail to give Parliament, and the public, confidence it has a credible plan to develop and sustain the necessary capabilities. b. It should then report annually on its progress against these medium–term targets. c. Alongside these medium–term targets, it should set out what actions will be needed, including clear milestones, to achieve a completely decommissioned site in the next hundred years. It should report progress against this every ten years.