Mike Piggott (Geological Oceanography, 1997)

Since then I made a further move in my career to Nuclear Waste Services as Director of Sites & Operations, essentially the Director of one of the UKs Nuclear Decommissioning Authority’s seventeen Nuclear Licensed Sites, the Low-Level Waste Repository in West Cumbria. In the meantime, during the lockdown in March 2020, I was working with Sellafield as the Programme & Project Partners (PPP) Transformation Director. PPP is a 20-year relationship between Sellafield and 4 organisations, to deliver the site’s infrastructure to enable the site’s 100-year decommissioning programme, it will deliver 25 major projects ~£7bn. My role was to facilitate establishing the partnership and act as the conscience of the client to embed and realise the business case benefits of enhancing delivery capability, from demonstrating value for money, to improving reputation, and contributing positively to social impact in Cumbria and beyond. What I didn’t expect was an approach to take on my current role, and although I wasn’t planning a move so soon, it felt like the opportunity to bring together all aspects of my career from geology to project management, cultural development, collaboration, and pursuit of a greater cause.

Nuclear Waste Services brings together the UK’s leading nuclear waste management capabilities, providing an integrated way of tackling waste of the past, while offering more sustainable and efficient services to waste producers, now and in the future.

My role is to manage our operating sites, like the repository, and my day-to-day focus is on the safe, secure and environmentally compliant operation of the nuclear licensed site, and responsible stewardship for future generations.

Disposal is a highly responsible aspect of our industry, enabling nuclear decommissioning, and continued educational, medical and research industries, much like we saw at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this year where the people who empty the bins were on strike - if waste isn’t well managed, the impact is quickly felt by waste consignors with waste backing up and detrimentally impacting their missions. The good news is a key aspect of our innovation is applying a strict waste hierarchy, in 2009 some 95% of waste volume coming from the industries we support was disposed of, today that number is 2%!

My facility must operate successfully on its mission protecting people and the environment until 2130, this means our understanding of the waste, how it is treated, how the facility performs, the development of future disposal capacity and how we construct the final cap over the waste, is a tremendously exciting challenge working with highly capable operators, scientists, and engineers, to deliver a key capability to the UK. Although the lectures with Dei Huws and Sinclair Buchan don’t feel that long ago, this feels like a high point on a 25-year career and the future looks exciting. Of course, I should mention how sad I was to hear Sinclair passed away recently, someone for whom I hold fond memories - he leaves a tremendous legacy. https://www.gov.uk/government/people/mike-pigott https://www.linkedin.com/in/pigottmike