Nuclear-Decommissioning Provision Recovery Authority

The mandate

Site plans estimate defuelling, dismantling, waste conditioning, storage and remediation across decades, while accounting provisions, regulatory baselines and segregated funding assets use different calendars and risk assumptions. A proposed waste-route change moved both timing and cost, but management could not reproduce the bridge from engineering estimate to booked liability. The finance leader resigned before annual governance.

The eighteen-month assignment starts within four weeks and covers scope inventory, estimate structure, schedule, uncertainty, inflation, discounting, foreign exchange, provision recognition and movement, trust assets, regulatory reporting and cash planning. It must stabilise current reporting, complete one full planning and audit cycle, and establish permanent leadership without directing nuclear safety or technical strategy.

Permanent recruitment begins in month nine. Handover requires a source-to-provision model for each site, documented assumption ownership, movement bridges, funding reconciliation, eight site walkthroughs, four controlled quarter-ends and two long-range scenarios. The successor must resolve an unseen waste-route delay and discount-rate move during an eight-week protected overlap and defend both liability and cash consequences.

The role may reject unsupported finance assumptions, require engineering attestations, set estimate-control standards, approve delegated provision entries, redirect the authorised GBP 95 million remediation budget and replace temporary finance leads. The board retains site strategy, safety case, waste route, accounting policy, discount methodology, trust investment, regulatory commitments, project approval, public disclosure and permanent appointments.

Engineering design, safety authority, environmental permitting, waste-contract negotiation, actuarial opinion, trust-asset management and regulatory settlement remain outside scope. The leader may challenge evidence and quantify alternatives but cannot choose a technical route or use funding-asset performance to offset unsupported liability. The fixed term closes after the audit cycle and tested handover.

Why this seat is open

Engineering owns technical scope, project controls owns schedules, Treasury oversees funding and Accounting recognises the liability. The disputed bridge showed that the departing leader’s manual integration was not durable. Temporary authority is required across sites and the annual cycle while a permanent leader learns to govern extremely long-dated uncertainty.

What you will own

• Reconcile site scope, work breakdown, schedule, quantities, rates, uncertainty, inflation and discounting into provision movements.
• Establish ownership and evidence for defuelling, dismantling, waste, storage, remediation, shared facilities and programme overhead.
• Bridge accounting provision, regulatory baseline, long-range cash, trust assets and disclosed sensitivity without inappropriate netting.
• Govern estimate changes, optimism challenge, scenario range, approval, versioning, audit evidence and unresolved technical dependency.
• Lead scenarios involving waste-route delay, scope discovery, inflation shock, discount movement and funding-asset underperformance.
• Maintain site-to-group movement analysis, remediation decisions, regulator questions and authorised expenditure.
• Transfer four quarters, eight site files, two long-range scenarios and the unseen waste event to the permanent leader.

Candidate qualifications

• Held senior nuclear-liabilities, decommissioning finance or comparable long-duration provision authority.
• Reconciled engineering scope and schedule with accounting provision, regulatory baseline, cash plan and segregated funding assets.
• Challenged estimate uncertainty, optimism, inflation and discounting without trespassing into licensed safety decisions.
• Governed multi-site movement bridges and audit evidence through material waste-route or scope changes.
• Presented long-range liability and funding scenarios to boards, regulators, trustees and technical leaders.
• Completed successful succession through a full annual cycle and an unseen technical-and-financial change.

Non-negotiables

• Can complete eight licensed-site residencies and remain through the full audit and planning cycle.
• Will disclose relationships with operators, regulators, waste bodies, engineering firms, trustees, auditors and government.
• Brings nuclear or comparably regulated decommissioning-liability control; ordinary asset-retirement accounting alone is insufficient.
• Will not direct safety, choose waste routes, manage trust assets, negotiate regulation or net weak liability evidence.

1. 49 words maximum. Describe a decommissioning provision that changed after engineering scope or schedule evidence was rebuilt.
2. 49 words maximum. How would you keep liability, funding assets and regulatory baseline visibly separate?
3. 49 words maximum. What waste-route scenario must the permanent leader resolve before handover?