Decommissioning work stalling

Employees working on nuclear decommissioning are "twiddling their thumbs" because there are not enough funds, according to unions.

While the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) is set to award a decommissioning contract which could be worth up to £20 million, Mike Graham, national secretary of Prospect union said that existing decommissioning work has stalled.

He told Scenta news site: "There are a number of people who are going into work twiddling their thumbs because there is no money available for decommissioning work to be carried out and no money to pay people off."

This is despite the fact that, according to nuclear consultant Ian Jackson, 1p in every pound of income tax is being spent on funding decommissioning.

Almost half of the budget for Malcolm Wick’s Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform is spent on decommissioning the UK’s old nuclear facilities such as the Bradwell site in Essex and Sizewell in Suffolk.

But despite the large chunk of national funds, the NDA has suspended plans to issue contracts for cleaning up old Magnox reactors and is scaling back decommissioning work to focus on Sellafield.