Cost of a Dump
Posted: 26th October 2025
The true cost of an underground facility for long-term storage of nuclear
waste has been revealed to be up to £68.7bn – £15bn more than the sum
listed in the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation
Authority’s (Nista’s) recent annual report. A Geological Disposal
Facility (GDF) represents a monumental undertaking, consisting of an
engineered vault placed between 200m and 1km underground, covering an area
of approximately 1km2 on the surface. This facility is designed to safely
contain nuclear waste while allowing it to decay over thousands of years,
thereby reducing its radioactivity and associated hazards. Nuclear Waste
Services (NWS) is responsible for the GDF project and declares that this
method offers the most secure solution for managing the UK’s nuclear
waste, aimed at relieving future generations of the burden of storage. NWS
is part of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), which is itself an
executive non-departmental public body, sponsored by the Department for
Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ). Nista is a unit of HM Treasury and
published its NISTA Annual Report 2024 to 2025 in August 2025, where it
described the GDF project as ‘Red’, meaning the projects appears to be
“unachievable”, and as having a whole life cost of from £20bn to
£53.3bn. However, Nista’s Infrastructure Pipeline lists the GDF’s
CapEx (capital expenditure) range for new infrastructure in 2024/2025
prices as being from £26.2bn to £68.7bn, with the top end being slightly
over £15bn higher than the figure published in the annual report. A
government source explained to NCE that the discrepancy is because the
figures published in Nista’s annual report are based on 2017/2018 prices,
meaning the effects of long-term inflation were not accounted for.
New Civil Engineer 23rd Oct 2025
https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/true-cost-of-nuclear-waste-disposal-facility-15bn-higher-than-recent-treasury-figures-23-10-2025/