News & Star

‘Nuclear focus on Sellafield’

Published on 29/10/2007
Moveable priorities: Above left, Dungeness Nuclear Power Station in Kent. Above right, Sellafield, where union leaders are concerned work will be transferred from the south amid a funding crisis
Moveable priorities: Above left, Dungeness Nuclear Power Station in Kent. Above right, Sellafield, where union leaders are concerned work will be transferred from the south amid a funding crisis

By Chris Story

NUCLEAR industry union leaders are seeking government talks amid claims that resources are to be moved from southern England to Sellafield in west Cumbria.

They are concerned that clean-up work at a number of defunct nuclear reactors is to be stopped because of funding problems.

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) is to publish a business plan next month which unions believe will lead to a shift north.

Unions suspect clean-up work will be halted at magnox reactors in Sizewell A in Suffolk, Dungeness A in Kent, Hinkley Point A in Somerset, Bradwell in Essex and Berkeley in Gloucestershire.

An NDA spokesman would not comment on details of the business plan but admitted it was “prioritising spending towards higher hazards”.

GMB union national officer Gary Smith said: “We know we need to clean up the existing nuclear power stations and build new ones for energy security and to reduce carbon emissions.

“However, we are held up as the government seeks a non existent private sector solution to progress these plans.

“It would be better to face reality and acknowledge that public funding and ownership is the only way forward for decommissioning the existing sites and building and operating new nuclear power stations. In the Sellafield workforce we have a centre of excellence that can be used to progress all these plans.”

Irish Want Sellafield To Close: page 5