Hugh Collum, Chairman of British Nuclear Fuels
The Chairman of British Nuclear Fuels has said that he may have to consider the unthinkable and move away from nuclear reprocessing at Sellafield. However, Hugh Collum told the Commons Trade and Industry committee that this was not on the cards at the moment. The committee heard that BNFL had a reprocessing contract with British Energy until the year 2086.
Winning new orders from countries including Germany would depend on the success of a recovery programme now being drawn up, MPs were told. Mr Collum told the Commons Trade and Industry Select Committee that BNFL had been badly damaged by recent events, which has led to the postponement of plans to partly privatise the company. "We have a major job to get on the front foot and restore our reputation and the confidence of our customers," he said.
Mr Collum said senior management at BNFL now had a duty to look at all alternatives and to study the strategy for the business. He said he was not actively looking of moving from reprocessing to storage, but added, "we must be in a position to look at the unthinkable. Over the course of time we will look at these alternatives. We have no plans to change our strategy. If we have a viable profit base we have no intention of getting out of reprocessing, but we must be prepared to look at alternatives."
Mr Collum assured MPs that everyone at Sellafield working with MOX fuel will be retrained, and the quality of management will be improved. The manual process which led to the data falsification has now been automated so a similar incident could not happen again, he said. Mr Collum added that if confidence was not restored there would be a serious impact on employment, especially in Cumbria.
