The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority

03 October 2007

One of the fundamental reasons for setting up the NDA was to establish a competitive market in nuclear decommissioning in order to help drive innovation and efficiency. The NDA’s first competition, LLWR, is in its final stages with negotiations currently underway with a preferred bidder. The second is for the much larger and more complex competition for the Sellafield site licence company (incorporating Sellafield itself, Calder Hall, Capenhurst and - in due course subject to re-licensing by the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate – Windscale). The Sellafield competition is progressing well and is currently in the competitive dialogue stage with 4 bidders.

Before proceeding with the remaining elements of the competition schedule the NDA is taking the opportunity to reflect on feedback from its ongoing market engagement activity and is reviewing this with Government. Feedback from the Magnox South Industry Day and subsequent market engagement identified issues around the sequencing, scope and timing of the remaining competitions and, as a result, the NDA has decided to hold back issuing the pre-qualification questionnaire for the Magnox South bundle.

This pause in the competition process will enable the NDA and Government to consider any lessons learnt from the first two competitions and review the best way forward to ensure we have the optimum timing and scope of competitions for the NDA’s remaining sites in order to attract the highest quality bidding teams to the competitive dialogue process.