Annual Review of Performance 2018/2019 Performance Delivering 2 Annual Review of Performance 2018/2019 Contents Annual review of performance 2018/19 03 Introduction 04 A letter from the CEO 07 Who are we? 08 What are we doing? 10 How are we doing it? 12 Transforming Sellafield 14 Our productivity 16 Introduction to the legacy ponds and silos 18 Case study – First Generation Magnox Storage Pond 20 Case study – Pile Fuel Storage Pond 22 Case study – Magnox Swarf Storage Silo 24 Case study – Pile Fuel Cladding Silo 26 A year at Sellafield: 27 Quarter 1 – April - June 2018 28 Quarter 2 – July - September 2018 32 Quarter 3 – October - December 2018 34 Quarter 4 – January - March 2019 38 Case study – Thorp 40 Case study – The Silo Maintenance Facility 42 Case study – Repurposing our waste encapsulation plants 44 Case study – Changing the Sellafield skyline 46 Case study – Travel and access changes Annual Review of Performance 2018/2019 3 Making Sellafield safer sooner The Sellafield site in West Cumbria is one of the most complex and hazardous nuclear sites in the world. Our purpose is to clean up Sellafield. Our vision is to be a world leader in solving complex nuclear challenges. Our mission is to safely and securely remediate the Sellafield site for the benefit of the industry, nation and region. 4 Annual Review of Performance 2018/2019 A letter from the CEO Annual Review of Performance 2018/2019 5 The success of a £2 billion turnover company would ordinarily be judged by its share price, the amount of profit it had made or perhaps its market share. At Sellafield Ltd we don’t have any of those traditional measures. We don’t pay shareholders dividends, we are a non-profit organisation and, as the nuclear site licence holder for Sellafield, we aren’t in competition with other organisations to deliver the mission on the site. Instead we measure our success by performance against our strategic objectives; safe, secure site stewardship, demonstrable progress, and delivering a return on the investment for our stakeholders. We also have a duty to make a positive societal impact in the areas in which we operate. Safe, secure site injury but clearly had the potential to starting to demolish the diffuser at the stewardship do so. As a result, we have reviewed our top of the Windscale Pile Chimney. approach to excavation works and have This year, our challenge is to continue this We continue to drive towards zero implemented improvements. accidents and safety events at progress, while working more efficiently, Sellafield, however we have described Along with the safety of our employees, removing waste from our processes and our performance in the past financial the security of our site, our nuclear procedures and focusing on those things year as mixed. We saw strong facilities and nuclear materials is our that provide the most value. performance in our nuclear and overriding priority. In 2018/19 the site radiological safety, but we also saw a benefited from investment in visible Return on investment and non-visible security measures that disappointing trend in conventional We set ourselves challenging role and have contributed to our industry leading safety and environmental events. cost reduction targets to help make us security performance. At the very end of the financial year we more efficient, to deliver more value. entered a guilty plea to a prosecution Demonstrable progress These targets are not designed to by the Office for Nuclear Regulation remove people from the business or to I am proud of how much Sellafield is over a personal contamination event hand money to shareholders. They are changing. Last year, some of milestones that happened in February 2017. As designed to move resources to more we achieved include: I said at the time of the hearing, it is value-adding activities. extremely disappointing that it happened • Completing reprocessing in Thorp and In 2018/19 we removed over 500 despite our robust and thorough safety making progress to safely conclude roles from the business, moving those arrangements, and that it had an adverse Magnox Reprocessing. effect on one of our employees and people to new jobs in the business, and their family. This was an isolated incident • Getting our two legacy waste facilities delivered over £300 million of savings. and the Office for Nuclear Regulation ready for retrievals. That means that acknowledged that the case does not in 2019/20 we will be removing waste Transforming and sludge from all four of our legacy point to any broader concern about the Our success in 2018/19 should also be ponds and silos. control of risks and hazards across our judged against our progress towards site. But it is a strong reminder of the • Awarding a 20-year contract to bring becoming the business that we want nature of our business and to redouble in Project and Programme Partners to to be. our efforts to improve. help us deliver mission-critical capital To this end we: The Office for Nuclear Regulation also projects at Sellafield. • Launched our new Values: issued us with an Improvement Notice • Changing the Sellafield skyline, following damage to a high-voltage bringing a redundant ventilation stack – Safety and security: at the heart cable in May last year during excavation to a height where it no longer poses a of all we do as we move to be an work. The incident did not result in any risk to the surrounding buildings, and environment remediation company. Continued on page 6. 6 Annual Review of Performance 2018/2019 – Ambition: working collaboratively Making the most of the additional work, including work in and considering how we can opportunities ahead support of the wider NDA group and improve at every opportunity. the further acceleration of retrievals The coming financial year is another vital from the legacy ponds and silos. – Integrity: doing the right things and step for us. being open and honest. I believe we will deliver even more It will see us move closer to the end value in 2019/20, and I look forward to – Inclusion: respecting and including of reprocessing in Magnox, emptying working with our employees, supply the individual and creating an Calder Hall’s reactors for the final time, chain, stakeholders and communities environment in which people grow, and start to retrieve waste from our silos. as we do. develop and perform at their best. It will see us continue to drive for Paul Foster, • Launched our new social impact efficiencies, removing waste from the Chief Executive Officer strategy, setting out our ambition to business, channelling effort to make Sellafield Ltd help our communities create a diverse Sellafield safer, sooner. and sustainable future beyond the nuclear industry. It will see us continue to work differently, more collaboratively, • Tackled issues identified in our with the supply chain. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion survey, specifically mental health and bullying I know that such times of change can and harassment. give rise to uncertainty, but what we do know is that our pursuit of efficiency is • Reconfirmed our commitment to already paying dividends. the next generation through our apprenticeship and graduate schemes Our performance in 2018/19 has and through the introduction given our owner, the Nuclear of a community apprenticeship Decommissioning Authority (NDA), programme. confidence in our abilities. They have asked us to deliver £100 million of Annual Review of Performance 2018/2019 7 Who are we? Part of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority group. Owned by the Nuclear What are our values? Decommissioning Authority, Safety and security we spend £2 billion every Safety and security are at the heart of all we do year but are a non-profit as we move to be an environmental remediation organisation. We are working company. with our supply chain partners, Ambition academia and research We work collaboratively and consider how we institutes to clean up Sellafield, can improve at every opportunity. one of the most complex Integrity environmental remediation We do the right things and are open and honest. challenges in the world. Inclusion We respect and include the individual and create an environment in which people grow, develop and perform at their best. 8 Annual Review of Performance 2018/2019 We’re carrying out We recycle and store What the environmental used nuclear fuel. clean-up of the As specialists in spent fuel most complex and management, Sellafield are we hazardous nuclear receives, treats, recycles, site in the UK. and packages all levels of nuclear waste. The decommissioning of the doing? Sellafield site will take over Our new facilities will 100 years. safely store nuclear fuel for EDF Energy. As reprocessing comes to an end, so our focus is shifting We return any waste that to high hazard retrievals, arises from our overseas risk reduction, broader customers to the country decommissioning activities of origin. and remediation. We’re working to clean up the site as quickly as possible but won’t jeopardise our duty of care by working in haste. Annual Review of Performance 2018/2019 9 We’re guarding the We’re global experts We’re delivering UK’s special nuclear in nuclear waste capital projects. materials. management. Delivering our mission at Sellafield was a pioneer in the As our mission to clean Sellafield depends on our development of the nuclear up our legacy buildings ability to successfully and industry in the UK. progresses, we’re building consistently deliver major modern waste retrieval, projects. We must do so Now, as global experts in the processing and storage safely, to specification safeguarding of special nuclear facilities to look after the (quality), on schedule and materials, our priority is the resulting nuclear fuel and within budget.