Thousands of workers will move from the public to the private sector when a consortium of three firms takes over a £22 billion contract to run one of the UK's biggest nuclear sites.
One of the biggest and most complex public procurement exercises ever held in this country will be completed when the shares in Sellafield Ltd are transferred from the state-owned BNFL to a newly created private sector consortium.
Around 12,000 workers will move from the public to the private sector although the land, buildings and nuclear materials, including waste will remain under the ownership of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), the government agency responsible for the clean-up of the UK's civil nuclear legacy.
Nuclear Management Partners, made up of US giant Washington International, the UK's Amec and French firm Areva, will own the shares in Sellafield Ltd for the duration of the contract which is for up to 17 years.
The value of the work is £1.3 billion in its first year and over the lifetime of the contract equates to twice the cost of the 2012 Olympics, two and a half times the cost of the West Coast mainline upgrade and on a par with replacing the Trident missile system.
The consortium beat three rivals to win the contract at the huge Sellafield site in Cumbria.
Analysts have estimated that the reprocessing and clean-up work will generate profits of £50 million a year.
GEOCODE(Lat:54.42598253488541,Long:-3.509410321712494,Place:'Sellafield, Cumbria')
