Tom Little

Last updated at 10:57, Thursday, 31 January 2013

Sellafield Decommissioning Director Jim French has stepped down from the post so that he can return to his family in the USA.

Infrastructure director Paul Foster will take over as Decommissioning Director at the nuclear reprocessing site on a temporary basis. 

His focus will be addressing the next phase of acceleration of high hazard reduction and preparing for bulk retrievals. 

Paul Mair, who has acted as his deputy for the past nine months, will fill his role.

The transition planning programme introduced by Sellafield’s parent company NMP promised to allow Sellafield Ltd employees to take over top roles. The recent shake-up sees this plan come to fruition.

A Sellafield spokesman said: “During his two years at Sellafield Jim French has led significant progress in preparing the high hazard facilities for retrieval of legacy wastes, and we would like to thank him for his great contribution to our mission.

“Jim’s larger than life personality and love of story telling are legendary – we will miss him, and wish him well for the future.”

Paul Mair has worked at Sellafield for over twenty years in a number of roles including plant operations, commercial, project management and strategic planning.

Prior to joining Sellafield he spent several years working for the BBC on Ascension Island, responsible for all aspects of power station operations and the island’s infrastructure. 

Tom Gilroy, has been appointed to the role of Deputy Director for Infrastructure.  He has also spent most of his career working for Sellafield, most recently as Programme Manager for Infrastructure.

He was seconded to Cumbria County Council during flood recovery operations, joined Britain’s Energy Coast in April 2010 and was appointed CEO in December 2010. 

First published at 10:51, Thursday, 31 January 2013
Published by http://www.in-cumbria.com