Britain's nuclear caretaker privatised in Babcock sale

• £50m sale 'good value for taxpayers', says Mandelson• Opposition warns against further decommissioning levies
Graeme Wearden
guardian.co.uk, Friday 18 September 2009 11.04 BST
The body responsible for decommissioning and cleaning up Britain's fleet of nuclear power stations was sold today in the latest privatisation of part of the UK's nuclear industry.
UKAEA, the commercial arm of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, has been bought by Babcock International Group for £50m.
Business secretary Lord Mandelson claimed the deal "generates good value for taxpayers", but opposition politicians have previously voiced concerns over the sale.
UKAEA is currently carrying out decommissioning work at Dounreay in Scotland, Winfrith in Dorset, and Harwell in Oxfordshire. It also operates training programmes, and offers consultancy services to other countries. It has been on the market for almost six months.
Babcock, which is listed on the FTSE 250 index, already runs the UK's only nuclear refuelling facilities for its nuclear submarine fleet, at Devonport in Plymouth.
"The high level of skills and expertise in UKAEA will further accelerate the growth of our nuclear business," said Babcock's chief executive, Peter Rogers.
Back in March, when Mandelson put UKAEA up for sale, the shadow energy secretary, Greg Clark, said it could be a short-term move to bring cash into the government's books.
"The government has awarded contracts worth millions of pounds to UKAEA for decommissioning nuclear power stations and is reliant on the company to deliver them. The government must have cast-iron guarantees that any buyer will not hold the taxpayer to ransom for further payments for decommissioning Dounreay, Harwell and Winfrith," Clark warned.
The task of cleaning up after more than half a century of nuclear power is expected to cost Britain at least £83bn. The size of the challenge was underlined last year when the firm operating the Sellafield nuclear site appealed for former workers to come forward if they remembered where they had deposited nuclear waste.
UKAEA's waste management expertise could also be valuable when the next generation of UK nuclear power stations begins operating, possibly in 2017.
British Energy, which runs eight nuclear power stations, was privatised in 1996, but had to be rescued by the taxpayer in 2002. It was taken over in 2008 by France's EDF, which plans to build four new reactors.