Sellafield has ‘retrieved much less waste than it had planned’ since 2020, the NAO said. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian
National Audit Office questions value for money as predicted bill for decommissioning increases by £21bn
The cost of cleaning up Sellafield is expected to spiral to £136bn and Europe’s biggest nuclear waste dump cannot show how it offers taxpayers value for money, the public spending watchdog has said.
Projects to fix buildings containing hazardous and radioactive material at the state-owned site on the Cumbrian coast are running years late and over budget. Sellafield’s spending is so vast – with costs of more than £2.7bn a year – that it is causing tension with the Treasury, the report from the National Audit Office (NAO) suggests.
Officials from finance ministry told the NAO it was “not always clear” how Sellafield made decisions, the report reveals. Criticisms of its costs and processes come as the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, prepares to plug a hole of about £40bn in her maiden budget.
Europe’s most hazardous industrial site has previously been described by a former UK secretary of state as a “bottomless pit of hell, money and despair”. The Guardian’s Nuclear Leaks investigation in late 2023 revealed a string of cybersecurity problems at the site, as well as issues with its safety and workplace culture.
The NAO found that Sellafield was making slower-than-hoped progress on making the site safe and that three of its most hazardous storage sites pose an “intolerable risk”.
The site is a sprawling collection of buildings, many never designed to hold nuclear waste long-term, now in various states of disrepair. It stores and treats decades of nuclear waste from atomic power generation and weapons programmes, has taken waste from countries including Italy and Sweden, and is the world’s largest store of plutonium.
An aerial view showing a flooded New Road Cricket ground in Worcester, home of Worcestershire CCC. Flood warnings remained in place across the UK on Monday after Storm Ashley made its presence felt, October 21, 2024
THE “climate emergency” is not in the future. It is now, and each severe weather event exposes the fragility of systems we rely on on a daily basis.
Serious floods in western England caused by Storm Ashley are no anomaly: every year sees more such incidents. The State of the UK Climate report shows that Britain is getting wetter as well as hotter: five of the 10 wettest years on record have been in the 21st century, and rainfall over the last decade is 9 per cent higher than in the 1960s.
The consequences of such changes cannot be ignored indefinitely. England suffered its second-worst harvest on record this year, with the wheat crop down by more than a fifth, winter barley (primarily important for animal feed, but also for brewing) by more than a quarter and rapeseed (used for animal feed, cooking oil and many processed foods) by almost a third.
Britain imports about half its food: but then, climate change is a global phenomenon. France’s wheat harvest this year is nearly a fifth lower than usual. Drought has played havoc with olive oil harvests in Greece and Spain.
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A serious government would be addressing the impact of climate change through mitigation. It would be ready to spend money on flood defences, to protect cities and to protect agriculture. It would not leave vital systems like water in the hands of a private sector that continues to pay its executives millions in bonuses even while paying millions in fines for polluting and poisoning our rivers.
It would, in short, be treating climate change as an emergency: a process which requires us to rethink the way we live from city planning to transport to food production.
The continued failure of politicians to acknowledge that is a case of system failure.
Capitalism cannot sacrifice short-term profit even facing a crisis of this scale. But that puts the responsibility on us to demand better.
Over 2,000 people took to the streets of Naples against soaring military spending in Europe and increased repression of dissent as G7 defense ministers convened for high-level talks
Thousands of people took to the streets of Naples on October 19, demonstrating against the G7 military agenda and Italy’s proposed reforms that would limit the freedom to dissent. Protesters, representing a host of organizations including student associations, trade unions, and community centers, rallied against Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government’s policies, demanding a shift in priorities toward social needs instead of military spending. Side by side with the protest in Naples, demonstrations were held in dozens of cities across Italy, as reported by the left political party, Power to the People (Potere al Popolo).
Protesters carrying a banner reading “Cut the weapons, raise the wages!”. Source: Ex OPG occupato – Je so’ pazzo/Facebook
The protest was organized to counter a G7 defense ministers’ meeting that took place in Naples from October 18 to 20, with a focus on global military goals. The meeting was seen by protesters as yet another example of Western countries deepening their involvement in wars, including the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the war in Ukraine, instead of pursuing agendas of social justice and peace. In the lead-up to the meeting, local activists voiced their opposition, stating that “lords of war” were not welcome in their city.
“Never has so much been spent on war, and as a result, war is rampant everywhere,” the associations organizing the march asserted during the preparations. “We refuse to host a meeting in our city that supports the war economy our government has chosen to follow.”
Two central issues dominated the protest in Naples: the West’s support for Israel as it continues to exterminate the people of Gaza and the increasing repression of dissent at home, embodied in Meloni’s proposed security bill. Many protesters pointed out the link between military aggression abroad and domestic policies that seek to criminalize dissent. European countries continue to actively repress solidarity with Palestine and others, like Italy, are doing so while attempting to silence voices against their policies.
The new security bill seeks to impose severe restrictions on protests, including strikes and environmental activism. Progressive associations argue that this is a blatant attempt to stifle opposition and consolidate power, and some of them saw Saturday’s protest as a test run for the government’s strategy of suppressing future mobilizations. Days before the protest, authorities tried to restrict the march route, forcing organizers to end the demonstration a kilometer away from the G7 meeting site.
Despite these attempts, protesters refused to be stopped. They briefly broke through the set course of the rally, marching in areas originally declared off-limits by the authorities. In response, police deployed tear gas and used other forms of violence against them. Naples’ historic center has systematically been blocked off to popular protests, and things are set to get worse if the new bill is passed, protesters said. Because of that, community groups including Ex OPG – Je so’ pazzo called upon people to continue resisting.
“We believe this repressive project must be stopped, and more importantly, we see it as a reflection of the Meloni government’s fear of what might still be burning beneath the surface of the seeming calm in the country,” they said.
Saturday’s protest marked an important moment of resistance against the shrinking of democratic space in Italy, as well as to the strengthening of the armament agenda in Europe. Demonstrators announced they were ready to continue fighting against the security bill and expressed determination to challenge Meloni’s government over announced cuts to social support.
“Today, this square is sending a loud message: if the government thinks it can ignore social needs, public healthcare, workers’ rights, and housing in favor of pouring billions into military spending, it’s headed in the wrong direction,” said Chiara Capretti from Power to the People.
PEACE: Former Labour Party leader and now independent MP Jeremy Corbyn speaks at a London rally for Palestine, September 11 2024
Speaking at the Podemos congress over the weekend, JEREMY CORBYN MP outlines three crucial areas for building a powerful leftist movement across Europe: opposing austerity, promoting peace and combating the far right
AS we look to build a united left across Europe, there are three key issues that can form the basis of a strong, powerful movement: anti-austerity, peace and opposition to the far right.
Europe is heading toward a renewed era of austerity. We have witnessed attacks on wages and conditions all over Europe. Working-class living standards have fallen. Wages have stagnated. Meanwhile, there are more billionaires than ever before.
Inequality is not inevitable. It is the result of decisions that governments take to take money from the many and give it to the few. Last week, the British government celebrated its 100-day anniversary.
In that time, it has made two supposedly “tough” choices. One is to keep children in poverty by retaining the two-child benefits cap, refusing to lift 250,000 children out of poverty. The second decision was to cut the winter fuel allowance for 10 million pensioners.
We are told that these have been “tough choices.” Every day, my constituents make tough choices. Tough choices like deciding whether to heat their homes or put food on the table. Tough choices like taking out a loan to pay for this month’s rent. Tough choices like selling their home to pay for their family’s social care.
The government knows that there is a range of choices available to them. They could introduce wealth taxes to raise upwards of £10 billion. They could stop wasting public money on private contracts. They could launch a fundamental redistribution of power by bringing water and energy into full public ownership.
Instead, they have opted to take resources away from people who were promised things would change. There is plenty of money, it’s just in the wrong hands — and we will not be fooled by ministers’ attempts to feign regret over cruel decisions they know they don’t have to take.
Austerity is not a tough choice. It is the wrong choice. The British government tells us there is no money. At the very same time, they are committing to raising defence expenditure to 2.5 per cent of GDP.
