A longtime executive in the United Kingdom nuclear industry will take over as chief executive officer of Magnox Ltd. later this year, the government’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) said Tuesday.
Gwen Parry-Jones will formally assume the CEO position in September, when Magnox Ltd. becomes a subsidiary of NDA, a nondepartmental government agency established in 2004 to oversee nuclear cleanup around the nation. Until then, she will lead the transition to the new management model.
Privately operated Cavendish Fluor Partnership through Aug. 31 manages Magnox Ltd., which is decommissioning 12 nuclear facilities – mostly retired power plants. In 2017, the government announced it would cancel the contract nine years before its previously scheduled conclusion.
The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority in 2017 agreed to pay £97.5 million to settle two lawsuits from Bechtel and EnergySolutions, which had partnered in an unsuccessful bid for the award that went to Cavendish Fluor. The agency has been heavily criticized for weighting the procurement process in favor of the eventual awardee.
Parry-Jones was previously executive director of operations development at Horizon Nuclear Power, which until January was working on nuclear new builds in the U.K. Prior to that, she served as generation development director and safety and assurance director for EDF Energy.
Her career began in 1989 as a reactor physicist at the Magnox Wylfa power plant. She held a number of managerial roles in the United Kingdom and Canada, for both British Energy and EDF Energy.
