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British Nuclear Fuels Limited [BNFL]

British Nuclear Fuels plc (BNFL) was an international company, owned by the UK government, involved in all stages of the nuclear process, from designing reactors and manufacturing fuel, to decommissioning reactors and dealing with radioactive waste.

The UK government, as part of a major reduction of public bodies, decided in August 2016 to abolish British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL). The company, which was launched in 1971, grew to manage the UK's nuclear fuel cycle centers and all 26 Magnox nuclear power reactors. It established a US-based decommissioning division in 1990, bought the reactor vendor Westinghouse in 1999, and in 2000 bought the nuclear business of ABB and integrated it into Westinghouse. On 1st April 2005 all BNFL's UK assets were transferred to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. To begin with the company was divided into British Nuclear Group, Nexia Solutions and Westinghouse. Since then the sell-off and re-organisation has continued and in December 2007 it described itself as the holding company for Sellafield Ltd (which includes the Capenhurst and Calder Hall sites), British Nuclear Group Project Services and Nexia Solutions.

BNFL provided fuel manufacture and uranium procurement, as well as recycling used fuel, transporting radioactive materials, engineering, waste management and decommissioning. The integrated BNFL employs approximately 15,000 people plus 2,500 contractors at 17 sites across the UK. As a public limited company, BNFL operates in much the same way as any other international commercial organisation. The company is wholly self-financing, funding all of its investment programmes from its own cashflow and receives no monetary support from the Government. BNFL provides comprehensive nuclear fuel recycling services to UK and overseas electric power utilities.

Since 1964, the Magnox Reprocessing Plant at Sellafield had been reprocessing used nuclear fuel from the first generation nuclear power stations. The Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (Thorp) plant commenced operations in 1994 The enrichment business is undertaken by Urenco Limited, a company with its headquarters in Marlow, Buckinghamshire, which is jointly owned by BNFL with Dutch and German partners. Urenco operates three enrichment sites in Europe: Capenhurst, near Chester, in the UK; Almelo in the Netherlands and Gronau in Germany.

In June 1998, BNFL, in partnership with US company Morrison Knudsen Corporation (MK), concluded an agreement with CBS Corporation for the purchase of its Westinghouse global nuclear businesses. The Westinghouse nuclear portfolio comprises two businesses - Energy Systems (ESBU) and Government Services (GESCO). The combined turnover of the two divisions is $1.1 billion and together they employ over 21,000 people at some 30 US and 12 overseas locations.

In December 2003, the BNFL Board and its shareholder agreed a new strategy for the company consistent with the UK Government’s objectives for the creation of a competitive marketplace for nuclear decommissioning and clean-up in the UK.

This strategy has seen BNFL successfully support the UK Government in creating a new body, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), to oversee decommissioning and clean-up in the UK. On 1 April 2005, the UK’s civil public sector nuclear sites (including the assets and liabilities previously owned by BNFL) transferred to the NDA. Since that date, the NDA has contracted out the delivery of site management programmes at each site.

In parallel, BNFL successfully restructured its operations into standalone contracting businesses. Following the successful establishment of the NDA, BNFL progressively divested all its businesses and run down its corporate centre to reflect the reducing business activities across the group. BNFL successfully completed the implementation of its strategy with the transfer of the last business interest out of the group in May 2009. BNFL had no remaining operational activities or businesses. However the intention is that the BNFL Company continued in existence until it has met all pension liabilities and any obligations arising from the disposal programs.

Sellafield Ltd emerged from the re-organisation of BNFL as the company responsible for the delivery of contracts at the Sellafield and Capenhurst sites in England on behalf of site owners, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. Sellafield Ltd is called a Site Licence Company. The NDA announced in March 2007 that six organisations had pre-qualified as bidders for the Sellafield Parent Body Organisation (PBO) role. The six organisations will compete to run operations at a strategic management level while Sellafield Ltd would retain operational responsibility, and the skills and experience of the existing workforce. The PBO would own the shares in the Site Licence Company, to be known as Sellafield Ltd, for the duration of the contract. This will be for an initial period of five years with capability for periodic extension up to 17 years in total, subject to performance.

The decision to dissolve BNFL came with the closure of quangos (quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisations), a plethora of bodies set up to independently advise the UK government. As a public corporation BNFL was considered to be one of these.