The United Kingdom’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) on Friday said it had filed an official notice of termination for the Cavendish Fluor Partnership’s contract to decommission the nation’s 12 Magnox reactor sites.
The contract will now end on Aug. 31, 2019, nine years earlier than planned when it was awarded in 2014. Cavendish Fluor will also take home only a portion of the original £6.1 billion contract award – though the specific amount is commercially sensitive and will not be made public, NDA spokesman Daniel Gould said.
This announcement is in line with the NDA’s announcement in March that it would end the contract early, said Gould, representing the nondepartmental government body that oversees cleanup of U.K. nuclear sites. “None of this is new or unexpected,” he said.
The NDA said in March the contract was being terminated because the scope of decommissioning was much more significant than anticipated when the award was made, and not due to any failure by Cavendish Fluor. For example, far more asbestos must be removed from the reactor plants than previously thought, the agency said at the time.
The parties have come to consensus on the decommissioning activities Cavendish Fluor will carry out over the next two years at the 10 former nuclear power plants and two research sites, decades-old facilities that are all closed and in various states of decommissioning. Gould noted a number of upcoming milestones, including draining of spent fuel pools at three plants and placing the Bradwell station in Essex into “care and maintenance” mode, which precedes full site restoration.
The contractor has also agreed on the state in which each site will be left at the end of August 2019, according to an NDA press release. Additional details were not immediately available.
No final decisions have been made yet on the process for awarding the follow-on cleanup contract, Gould said.
This contract proved troublesome on multiple levels for the NDA, which also paid £97.5 million to settle two lawsuits over failures in the procurement process filed by U.S. companies that partnered in an unsuccessful bid on the work: EnergySolutions, which was also the prior Magnox decommissioning prime, received £85 million; Bechtel received £12.5 million.
The Cavendish Fluor Partnership is a venture of U.S.-based Fluor and U.K.-based Cavendish Nuclear. The companies did not respond by deadline to request for comment on the notice of termination.
An independent inquiry, led by former U.K. National Grid CEO Steve Holliday, is underway to examine the full contract process.
