Power - British firms off shortlist
WORKERS, APR 2007 ISSUE
No British company has been short listed for the decommissioning and decontamination work associated with the ten Magnox nuclear sites.
All the listed companies are US – Jacobs, Fluor, CH2M Hill and EnergySolutions.
Whoever is awarded the work will be in pole position for contracts initially for about ten years. But the consequences will be far-reaching.
No decommissioning has been attempted on this scale before, and the work programme is expected to run for several decades and be worth hundreds of millions in profit.
The exclusion of British companies will ensure that British expertise declines and that US interests will dominate future nuclear work, probably world wide.
It is like the battle in the 1970s and 1980s over nuclear design – between the pressurised water reactors (PWRs) designed by the US against the British-designed advanced gas-cooled reactors (AGRs). The Thatcher government of the day went with the US design, and severely undermined British skills, expertise and design.
The government will now move forward with its nuclear power privatisation programme timetabled for 2009.