A consortium led by Washington Group of the US has been named as the preferred bidder to run the Drigg nuclear waste store in Cumbria, the first step in theprivatisation of UK radio-active waste management.

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), a body set up by the government in 2005 to tackle the problems of Britain's mounting waste, is gradually selecting private-sector companies to tackle different aspects of the clean-up.

The NDA said on Wednesday that a consortium of Washington Group, Studsvik of Sweden, Areva of France and Serco of the UK had been chosen as the preferred bidder for the contract to run the low-level radioactive waste repository near Drigg, west Cumbria.

The contract initially runs for five years from October, but can be extended to up to 17 years, and is valued at between £200m and £500m.

As well as running the Drigg repository, the successful bidder will implement government policy on the future disposal of low-level waste, including a possible expansion of the Drigg facility, which is filling up.

The other bidders for the contract were a consortium led by Energy Solutions of the US and including BNG Project Services, Fluor and Jacobs, and a consortium of Babcock, Stoller and Nukem.

The largest contract to be tendered by the NDA will be for the running of the Sella-field complex in Cumbria, which is home to most of the country's high-level radio-active waste.

This is due to be awarded next year and is likely to be worth billions of pounds. Washington Group said on Wednesday that it was keen to bid for the Sellafield contract, with consortium partners Areva and Amec.

Serco will also be bidding for this contract, along with partners Bechtel and BWXT Nuclear Services, while the other bidders are a consortium of Fluor and Toshiba, and CH2M Hill. As well as tackling the worst of the UK's nuclear waste, the winner will run the Thorp nuclear fuel reprocessing plant, which has been out of action since a radioactive leak in April 2005.

Sir Anthony Cleaver, who recently retired as NDA chairman, said in an interview with the Financial Times last month that the biggest challenge was to render safe the waste left over from Britain's earliest atomic experiments and nuclear weapons programmes, which is stored at Sellafield.

"We will, if necessary, divert funds from other operations to deal with these high hazard areas," he said.

The NDA has estimated that the task of cleaning up the UK's nuclear waste will cost about £70bn and take many decades.

However, Sir Anthony said that over the past two years the NDA had saved £330m of taxpayers' money by looking at ways to carry out decommissioning more cost-effectively.

Source