Sellafield Ltd has shown that it is technically possible to retrieve waste from all of its oldest ponds and silos.25 The plan to make the site less hazardous assumes that it will be able to significantly accelerate the speed it works at over the next few years – and then sustain that pace until tasks are completed. This was described to us by the NDA as “being able to crawl before we can walk, and then walk before we can run”. Sellafield Ltd told us that it expects the teams removing waste from the ‘Pile Fuel Cladding Silo’ to remove at least three times as much waste in 2025–26 as they did in 2024–25 (and ideally, five times as much).26 It also expects to remove significantly more waste from the ‘Magnox Swarf Storage Silo’ from the early 2030s (potentially retrieving 24 times as much as it did in 2023–24 by the middle of that decade). Sellafield Ltd told us that its focus over the 20 Qq 42–47, 69 21 Letter from the Group Chief Executive Officer at the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority relating to the oral evidence session held on 20 March on Decommissioning Sellafield, 4 April 2025, pages 1–2 22 Q 12 23 Q 84 24 C&AG’s report, Figure 9 25 Q 20 26 Qq 14–15 11 next few years will be on developing the capability to do this (including installing additional machinery to retrieve waste and finishing building the ‘Box Encapsulation Plant’ elsewhere on the site).27