An American company with no experience as a nuclear power generator has been chosen by the government to take over several Magnox atomic plants from BNFL.
The sale of the management contracts for the plants to EnergySolutions coincides with soaring wages in the nuclear industry with workers at BNFL's Sellafield plant being offered a 4.85% pay increase - more than double the 1.9% the Treasury is trying to impose on other civil servants.
EnergySolutions beat competition from another US firm, Jacobs Engineering, to acquire Reactor Sites Management Limited (RSMC) which - through its subsidiary Magnox Electric - holds the contracts and licences to operate and decommission 10 nuclear sites and 22 reactors with a value of about £350m.
Two of the facilities, Oldbury and Wylfa, are still producing electricity for the national grid but the rest are being dismantled. Oldbury in Gloucestershire is set to shut next year and Wylfa in Anglesey in 2010. The total workforce of 3,500 will be transferred to the control of EnergySolutions.
EnergySolutions, based in Salt Lake City, Utah, is a leader in the field of nuclear decommissioning and has worked for the US government at sensitive nuclear military sites such as Los Alamos but admits that it has not had sole responsibility for sites that generate atomic energy.
Steve Creamer, the chief executive, said: "We take on this responsibility with the same commitment to safety and the environment that has always characterised our company." A spokesman said the tough pre-qualification demands set by BNFL would ensure it had all the experience it needed to run Oldbury and Wylfa.
BNFL said the deal offered "good value" for its shareholder, the government. The Prospect trade union said it was aware that EnergySolutions did not operate plants but believed the company's strong track record in safety and employee relations meant it was a welcome new owner for the business.
Mike Graham, the union's national secretary, said the enormous amount of activity in the atomic sector meant that there was a "goldrush" going on for those working inside it. Prospect is recommending the 4.85% offer from British Nuclear Group Sellafield, which operates the facility for BNFL.
"It is an exciting time for the sector with wages going up and a lot of opportunities around. All the big players are advertising for staff," said Mr Graham, who says senior nuclear engineers are now earning up to £60,000 a year in some Magnox stations.
The main role of EnergySolutions will be to decommission the vast bulk of the nuclear plants coming under its control. But the contracts to run the different sites for the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority will be put out to tender when they come up for renewal in the next couple of years.
The sites will come under two different contracts with Magnox South being put out to tender next year and Magnox North in 2009. Magnox was a design of power station developed in Britain and first used on the Calder Hall plant at Sellafield, the first commercial nuclear power station. Calder Hall began generating electricity in 1956 and closed in 2003 and the NDA is considering whether to retain it as a museum site.
EnergySolutions, an amalgamation of three companies that recently announced plans to float on the New York Stock Exchange, is thought by some to be interested in becoming a partner in any new nuclear reactors built in Britain.
The Utah company was recently forced to drop plans to double the size of its main US nuclear waste dump after opposition from environmental campaigners.
The sale of the Magnox sites is the second major sale by BNFL. The first was the disposal of its Westinghouse design and engineering subsidiary to Toshiba of Japan.
The sell-offs
The sale of the 10 Magnox sites is the latest in the sell-off of the various sections of BNFL, formerly British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. Westinghouse has been sold to Toshiba while the British Nuclear Group America business went, like Magnox, to EnergySolutions of the US. The biggest remaining part of BNFL is British Nuclear Group Sellafield, which manages the reprocessing site in Cumbria. That management contract will go out to tender in the middle of next year, which is later than planned. BNFL is expected to be wound up alongside the Sellafield contract in 2008.
Terry Macalister