Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, if he will make an assessment of compliance of operations at Sellafield with regulatory safety standards.

They are answerable to an independent regulator – the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR), which sets the standards by which the UK nuclear industry must operate.

We have a strong regulatory system across all nuclear operators in the UK. The ONR operates in line with international standards and the requirements set by the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA).

The ONR operates transparently and provides its assessment of standards at nuclear sites in its Annual Report and Accounts, which is laid in Parliament every year. In the latest report, the Chief Nuclear Inspector concluded that nuclear sites have satisfactorily achieved high standards of safety and security, thereby protecting the workforce and the public from harm.

The ONR’s Annual Report and Account sets out in some detail the ONR’s regulatory strategy at Sellafield, which is designed to enable Sellafield Limited to deliver its remediation programmes to reduce hazard and risk on the site, with a particular focus on accelerating safe and secure retrievals from the legacy ponds and silos. The ONR reports that this strategy is helping to secure “evidence-based confidence that the licensee is complying with its statutory obligations and that workers and the public are protected from the hazards of the site”.