The head of the government-owned company that manages the United Kingdom’s Sellafield nuclear site is scheduled to step down in January 2020.
Paul Foster has served as chief executive officer at Sellafield Ltd. since 2016, and has been at the site since 2000, according to an announcement Thursday.
Sellafield Ltd. manages nuclear fuel reprocessing and remediation at the Cold War-era facility that contributed to the U.K.’s nuclear weapons and power programs, including through production of plutonium. The company in April 2016 became a wholly owned subsidiary of the U.K.’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), the branch of the government charged with remediation of the nation’s nuclear complex.
In a press release, the NDA said Foster had managed “unprecedented progress” in cleanup at Sellafield, citing examples including extraction of all used nuclear fuel from the world’s first nuclear fuel pond and beginning removal of materials from multiple facilities.
“In the process, Paul established Sellafield Ltd as a business that delivers more value for money than ever before; Sellafield Ltd is on target to deliver £1.4 billion in efficiencies by 2020 and has pledged a further £1 – £1.4 billion to government by 2029,” the release says.
A November 2018 report from the British House of Commons, though, said the majority of major projects at Sellafield were significantly behind schedule and were expected to exceed their total budgets by £913 million.
There was no mention in the NDA press release regarding Foster’s successor.
Foster started at Sellafield Ltd. when it was privately operated. His positions at the site have included chief operating officer, decommissioning director, and infrastructure director. Previously, he worked for 12 years in the steel industry, according to his Bloomberg profile.
