[holding answer 9 July 2009]: Ministers and Officials meet the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) regularly to discuss its responsibilities for decommissioning and clean-up of the UK's public civil nuclear sites including the geological disposal of higher activity radioactive waste.The process to site a geological disposal facility is driven by discussions with potential host communities. The programme is flexible and able to incorporate both robust technical site investigations and ongoing interactions between the project and potential host communities. The Government have therefore not set a fixed delivery timetable, but the NDA, as part of their baseline delivery strategy, has a current planning assumption that the disposal facility could be available to receive the first waste in 2040. In the event that geological disposal facilities are not available until after this date, interim stores will have their lives extended as required, in order to provide safe and secure interim storage throughout the geological disposal facility development programme.