A NEW chief executive officer was appointed to Britain’s biggest nuclear site late last year, and it’s clear to see that the home-grown-talent who has risen through the ranks of Sellafield over the last three decades understands the many tasks such an appointment poses.

Euan Hutton understands the "privilege" that it is to be appointed to the top job at the employer which is so crucial to the Cumbrian economy and is taking on the epic mantle as "the man at the top" with its people at heart.

The now CEO first joined BNFL in 1991 as a graduate with a physics degree, being recruited just as the company was finishing the construction of the Thorp reprocessing plant and staying there whilst the plant was moved into active commissioning.

He said: “There was a whole load of us graduates that were recruited at the time to help run that facility, so that was really exciting. I was a radiation protection advisor, so my background was in physics and radiation protection.

“We took the plant active, it was really exciting times, working really long hours as you can imagine, and at that time that facility was the biggest earner of Japanese yen in the UK, so really big for the UK economy.”

After a few years the building got into smooth operation and Euan decided to move on to new challenges, with much more of an interest in the commissioning side of the business. This led to him taking a job as a special assistant to one of the site’s directors, a position which allowed him to "learn an awful lot more about the business" before moving into the waste management decommissioning side of the company.

He said: “Ultimately, I looked after the decommissioning of a number of facilities, old laboratories, old reprocessing plants up until about 2008.

“In 2008 I left the site. I spent two years working down in Barrow on the astute programme, finished there and then joined another organisation and spent two years on decommissioning nuclear facilities in Northern Italy.”

In 2012 Euan came back to Sellafield, taking on roles such as head of environment, health, safety and quality for decommissioning as well as health, safety and quality director in 2016, before becoming chief nuclear officer in 2018 and latterly site director.

Talking about his progression through BNFL and SL Ltd, Euan said: “I think it’s been a benefit to me in one of two ways. One I know how the site is wired together, so I kind of understand what’s plugged into what and how the work flows. 

“But I also know an awful lot of the people and I have kind of grown up with a lot of the people as well. People are just so important to us; we have got this big nuclear site to look after but the only way to look after it is by having amazing people. We have got loads of amazing people and I kind of feel like I know quite a lot of them. And because they know me, hopefully they see that I am quite genuine and authentic about the mission we are trying to deliver together, so I think that is really important.”

Following the resignation of former Sellafield CEO Martin Chown last year, Euan took up the role of interim CEO in July 2023 and had all of the responsibilities and accountabilities of a permanent CEO.

Talking about taking on the position, he said: “It’s a privilege, I am quite proud to be asked. I think the mission that we are on, we are a little bit different from other big organisations, we aren’t a FTSE 100 company although we are about the same size, we don’t make a profit, so we aren’t here to expand our business.

“We have got a really straightforward mission to complete and that is this place has been going for 70 years and over that time it has done some amazing things. It has delivered whatever has been asked of it over those years, right from the early days when the UK has said to it can you do this for us, be that as a deterrent programme or the commercialisation of reprocessing into the Thorp plant, and now into remediation.

“Every time the organisation, no matter what it was called, has been given a challenge it has delivered it, so to be asked to be the CEO of that organisation is a huge privilege.

“It’s very complex, you can’t think about it all the time, but I don’t need to. I have a group of brilliant people who think about all of the different bits of it.”

The Scottish born father of three has lived in West Cumbria since 1991, with his now grown-up children aged 25, 22 and 20 all being brought up in the area and educated at Cockermouth School.

“I have lived in our village for 23 years, but that still isn’t long enough to be a local," said Euan. “I am really invested in the place, I probably came here as most of us (graduates) did for sort of five years back in the '90s and I am still here, I can’t think of anywhere else I would live.

“My wife worked as a speech and language therapist for the NHS until a couple of years ago. Now she runs her own business doing Makaton.

“We like mountain biking and hill walking. I used to do a bit of running so it’s just a fantastic place to live”, he said.

And what’s something many might not know about the CEO? Euan revealed that he used to enjoy playing the bagpipes and had a brush with one famous '80s rock band.

He said: “Some of your readership might remember a band called Nazareth, a very famous band in the '70s and '80s. I have played in a band with the drummer from Nazareth, because he joined our pipe band and played the drums one afternoon.”

The organisation is working with partners and stakeholders such as Cumberland Council to get into areas with higher deprivation rates to try and target school age children to look at the nuclear industry, in order to try and look at targeting some of the recruitment problems that the site has faced in recent years.

Euan said: “I think we have got a brilliant workforce; I think it’s multi-generational which is great and yet it also can be a hindrance. We have got a real need for new people, we have got a bit of an ageing demographic.

“With the work that we have got to do and the multi decades that we have got to do it in there is a real need to attract people into the area and people from the area. When I talk to a lot of our apprentices we really want to break into parts of the county where people don’t work here.

“What we really want to do is get into those harder to reach parts to say to people come and have a go. We want to give those people the opportunity to work for us because we have amazing things for them to do.”

So, what does the future look like for the site? Euan says that as well as achieving the main missions that exist for Sellafield, he also hopes to look at new missions.

“The site is going to be here for over 100 years, it will take us over 100 years just to finish what we are doing. But why would you stop? If you have got that capability, if you have got one of these amazing facilities, people from around the world come and they are amazed by what we do,” he said. “If you have got that then you keep it, you exploit it and you get new missions”.

Euan has a strong hope that his time at Sellafield will leave a legacy of not only delivering the Sellafield mission, but also training the next set of nuclear experts.

When asked about the legacy he would like to leave at the site, he said: “In order to deliver the mission we need I think we need to be part of UK’s resurgence around nuclear. We can do that in the right ways by recruiting people, apprentices, graduates, direct entry. We have got to deliver the mission, but in delivering the mission we can train so many people, learn so many things that those people and those companies can take and deploy them in the UK. I think new nuclear is so important in the net zero ambition.

“I would love Sellafield to be at the forefront of creating those experts: come here, learn here, decommission something for us and then take those skills and go and do it somewhere else.”