Fears raised that specialist Vulcan MoD work could shift to Sellafield
Concern has arisen that the plans to put the clean-up of Vulcan in the hands of next-door Dounreay could lead to the break-up of a long-time, specialist Ministry of Defence (MoD) support team in the far north.
The MoD has yet to comment on speculation that the intended transfer of the Rolls-Royce workforce to NRS Dounreay could lead to future work in support of the UK nuclear submarine fleet being switched to the Sellafield plant in west Cumbria.
The suggestion has emerged in the wake of the UK government’s confirmation that the decommissioning of Vulcan is to be undertaken by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), which currently oversees only the clean-up of redundant civil nuclear reactor sites.
A Vulcan worker has told the Caithness Courier that the transfer has triggered a lot of disquiet.
“The majority of the workforce don’t want transferred to the NDA as they would have to re-train to support a general decommissioning role,” said the individual, who wants to remain anonymous.
“They would much rather continue to work on the existing MoD contract to make best use of their specialist skills that they have taken years to develop.”
Rolls Royce had earlier this year been informed by the MoD to expect more work involved with the current submarine programme to come to Vulcan.
But the worker claims that the site management has since been told that this is now scheduled to go to Sellafield.
“We don’t think that is right as it is unlikely that Sellafield will deliver the work on time,” said the individual. “The Sellafield programme has slipped for the last few years whereas Vulcan has been consistently hitting its delivery targets and we have been praised for it.
“If this work goes to Sellafield, the great specialist team that has been built up at Vulcan will be broken up and forced to move into a decommissioning role which does not need the same specialist skill set.”
The worker maintains retaining the work in Caithness represents the best value for the taxpayer.
“The workforce don’t think that it is right that the MoD are going to break up the team at Vulcan when highly skilled people are desperately needed in the nuclear sector and it will take many years to train any other team up to this level of specialism.
“We don’t think that delivers best value to the taxpayers of this country. We think that highly skilled jobs being taken from Scotland to England would be unjustifiable if publicly challenged.
“This work is the next phase of the programme that has already been safely and efficiently been conducted at Vulcan over the last 60 years.”
At the end of March, then-junior defence minister Maria Eagle announced that Vulcan’s nuclear submarine support role would continue until at least April 2027.
She further confirmed that at the end of this work, the site would move into full decommissioning mode and the 280-strong workforce would transfer from the MoD to the NDA.
A MoD spokesperson said: “Transition work is progressing to transfer the Vulcan site from the MoD to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority while ensuring we deliver value for taxpayers’ money.”
The MoD has a policy of not commenting on certain contracts it has placed due to “commercial and operational sensitivities”.
Rolls-Royce referred questions about the contract to the MoD, claiming it would be “inappropriate” for the firm to comment.
Both the MoD and Rolls-Royce declined to respond to the speculation about work being redirected to Sellafield.