Sellafield contract won by URS-led consortium

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) has awarded the contract to manage nuclear sites at Sellafield to a consortium including U.S. company URS Corp's Washington International unit, AMEC and France's Areva.

The NDA said the contract was worth around 1.3 billion pounds a year, plus an associated fee of 50 million pounds, and would involve decommissioning and waste storage work on the country's biggest nuclear site.

The award of a contract is a key development in efforts to clean up recently decommissioned nuclear plants. The government gave the green light in January to the building of a new fleet of nuclear power stations, likely to be located on land surrounding existing sites.

"We have successfully completed an intensive evaluation process aimed at securing the best possible parent body for Sellafield, where the most complex challenges we face exist," NDA Chief Executive Ian Roxburgh said in a statement.

He added that the organisation, created in 2005 with a remit to clear up after the nuclear industry, had looked at four bidding consortiums before deciding on the Washington entry.