The UK’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority in the last fiscal year restricted expenditure within the funding boundaries agreed by parliament and in line with targets agreed in 2015. 

NDA spent £3.3bn ($3.94bn) and generated £1.2bn in income including £619m from reprocessing and waste contracts, according to its annual report and accounts for 2017-2018.  It would have generated a budgetary surplus of £212m, but agreed with the government that £196m of this would be carried forward to address future “budget pressures”. The remaining £16m was returned to the government.

The NDA’s running costs totalled £44m, or 1.3% of its overall budget and included continued investment in research and socio-economic initiatives. Some £2.7bn was used for legacy cleanup including £2bn at Sellafield, £560m for decommissioning Magnox and £208m at the Dounreay nuclear site in Scotland.

In 2017 the NDA was criticised by two government committees and an independent inquiry for mismanaging a procurement process by awarding a £6.2bn Magnox cleanup contract to the wrong bidder for which it subsequently had to pay compensation to the losing consortium of around £100m.

The NDA, which was established in 2005, is responsible for decommissioning 17 UK nuclear sites, some dating back to the 1940s, plus associated liabilities and assets. This includes the first generation of Magnox nuclear plants, various research and fuel facilities and legacy sites at Sellafield and Dounreay.