Nuclear clean-up body is Cumbria bound

The new Nuclear Decommissioning Agency, the £85bn government body that will be charged with cleaning up after 50 years of nuclear development, is to be based in West Cumbria within a few miles of BNFL's Sellafield plant.

The announcement is likely to be made this week, and means it is odds-on that the deep-storage site for nuclear waste, which is likely to form a key part of the NDA's plans, will also be sited in Cumbria.

Patricia Hewitt, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, is to present a Bill to create the NDA this year.

Its role will be to decommission all the UK's nuclear power stations when their active life comes to an end, to clean up those sites and the sites used by the Ministry of Defence for its nuclear submarines, and to dispose of all the nuclear waste that has been created over the years.

The total cost of the clean-up is estimated to be in the region of £85bn, though this will be spread over more than 20 years as nuclear power stations start closing down and the waste is dealt with.

Controversially, the Government has chosen US engineering group Bechtel to advise on the technical aspects of the NDA. Bechtel helped build the Yucca Mountain deep-storage site in Nevada and many nuclear experts are pressing for a similar facility to be built to deal with nuclear waste in the UK.

West Cumbria was chosen as the site for the NDA because of the job creation prospects in a depressed part of the UK. The most likely site for the NDA is West Lakes, a science park near Sellafield part-owned by BNFL.