The NDA group | Employee Bulletin

Introduction from David Peattie, CEO of the NDA group

Welcome to the latest Employee Bulletin. Since our last edition we’ve seen some fantastic achievements and developments across the NDA group.

It was wonderful to see so many colleagues take centre stage in May for our first ever NDA group employee awards, recognising the achievements and contributions of people across our group’s organisations. Congratulations to all the winners and nominees. You can watch the group awards and learn more about the winners in this bulletin. 

Since our last bulletin, we’ve launched the NDA group’s Sustainability Strategy 2022, setting out our five-year path to becoming leaders in sustainability. An important part of sustainability is an organisation’s impact on society, and a virtual exhibition is now online which gives detail on the NDA group’s investment in site communities across the UK.

In September, and for the first time in three years, NDA group representatives were able to host around 170 national stakeholders at the 2022 NDA Stakeholder Summit, held in Edinburgh, where we shared progress being made in decommissioning. I was delighted to announce £528,000 funding to support three new post-doctoral research bursaries across the UK. They will allow academic researchers to develop their research career in some of the NDA group’s key focus areas of sustainability, the environment, engagement, and the management of risk.

In the summer we saw the end of operations at Sellafield’s Magnox reprocessing plant. The plant took its final feed of spent fuel in July, concluding operations at one of the world’s oldest nuclear fuel reprocessing plants. The historic moment ended 58 years of safe operations in the plant with around 55,000 tonnes of Magnox fuel reprocessed through the facility. The building and its supporting plants will now enter an era of clean-up and decommissioning. Generations of workers have helped keep low carbon electricity flowing to homes and businesses through the plant’s operations.

Our role in low carbon energy generation took a step forward following the announcement that we’ll be working with Welsh Government development company Cwmni Egino to support proposals for a new nuclear development on NDA land, just outside the boundary of the Trawsfynydd site, in north Wales. This is a great example of how we’re being trusted to do more and being asked to support the UK Government’s energy security strategy.

In July we launched the NDA group Operating Framework. The Framework is a suite of documents that sets out how our group is organised, governed, and will work together. Providing clarity in this way is an important part of helping to maximise the benefits of working as a group.

Preparations continue for EDF’s advanced gas reactors (AGRs) to move over to us over the next ten years for decommissioning by Magnox once they’ve been defueled. Sellafield and the group’s transport business, Nuclear Transport Solutions, are involved in supporting the defueling of the reactors.

Finally, you’ll see in the bulletin that, in addition to the employee bulletin, we’ve now included the NDA group Inclusion update, where you’ll learn more about the fantastic work on inclusion taking place across the group.

Find out more about the above in this issue of the bulletin.

Photo: David Peattie, NDA group CEO