Sellafield

Sellafield, in Cumbria, currently deals with most of the country's waste, but it is running out of space and costs are spiralling.

Taxpayers today are still paying for Sellafield to deal with nuclear waste from the 1950s.

Although the committee noted there were "signs of improvement", PAC chairman Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown said Sellafield continued to present "intolerable risks".

Pointing to the fact that Sellafield Ltd had missed most of its annual targets for retrieving waste from buildings, including the MSSS, the committee warned: "The consequence of this underperformance is that the buildings are likely to remain extremely hazardous for longer."

Sir Geoffrey said it was of "vital importance that the government grasp the daily urgency of the work taking place at Sellafield and shed any sense of a far-off date of completion for which no-one currently living is responsible".