BNG finds US partner for clean-up bid

British Nuclear Group (BNG) is teaming up with a little-known US company to bid for the first competitive contract for the estimated £56bn of nuclear clean-up work in the UK.

BNG is preparing a joint bid with Maryland-based clean-up company Duratek for the initial contract for the low-level waste facility at Drigg in Cumbria. The contract, which will be for around three years, could be worth £20m.

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), which now has responsibility for most of the UK's nuclear liabilities, will issue the contract for the 110-hectare Drigg site next summer.

The NDA says it will cost £1.3bn and take until 2150 to clean up and close the site, where nuclear waste has been stored since 1959. Other companies have already begun contacting the NDA about the Drigg contract.

By 2008, the NDA must put out half of its total clean-up work to competitive tender. The UK company Amec and US giants Fluor, Jacobs and Bechtel are all interested in bidding. Bechtel is currently advising the NDA.

A BNG spokesman declined to comment on Duratek. He said: "Whether we team up - and, if so, who with - is commercially confidential."

A spokeswoman for Duratek said it had spoken to UK companies including BNG about the Drigg contract. "We are looking at teaming and partnering with companies," she said. "We have not disclosed who with. But we think [teaming up] with a UK company is the right thing to do."