Link to the study - European Parliament - Europa

Policy Department D: Budgetary Affairs
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Figure 19: Development of work force from 2011 till 2119 and from 2011 till 2021
Source: (NAO 2012)
As can be seen from the upper figure ('Long term manpower profile') the concept that these numbers
are based on cannot be called a 'safe enclosure period' strategy because of the extremely high
employment rates over several decades (until the year 2119). It is unclear from those figures what
these many employees shall perform over this very long period. It looks like the work is simply
delayed but not structured in conformance with subprojects and work steps. An integration of the
curves yields roughly 430,000 man∙years in the lower case and roughly 560,000 man∙years in the
upper case. With an average cost figure for wages of £ 50,000/man∙year over the whole period, those
wages alone would add up to £ 21,500 million (EUR 26,000 million) in the lower case and
£ 28,000 million (EUR 33,000 million) in the higher case. This indicates that either the cost calculation
(see chapter 3.3.6) or the employment estimate here are inconsistent, differing by more than a factor
of 100.
One argument for choosing the NMP as new Parent Body was that there is the chance to use the
expert knowledge available at its parent companies. With this outside expertise the performance in
Sellafield was intended to be improved. But critics note the extremely high costs for the external
workforce (House of Commons 2013). In 2011-2012 Sellafield Ltd had 16 executives from its parent
body and NDA reimbursing their salaries and other costs, e.g. relocation packages. Between
November 2008 and March 2012 this summed up to £ 32 million (NAO 2012).
The parent body NMP also uses specialists known as 'reachback' for e.g. managing critical projects
and programmes. NDA reimburses the costs plus an additional 10 % contribution to overheads of the
parent companies. In 2011-2012 the total cost for the reachback was £ 17 million. In February 2012
the NDA identified decencies in the use of reachback resources. This resulted in the development of a
reachback deployment strategy (NAO 2012). Other worries concern knowledge management over
the long-term since foreign staff normally stays for only 2 to 3 years and all undocumented
experience and knowledge gained is lost.
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