By Matthew Legg

Published at 11:46, Tuesday, 02 September 2008

NUCLEAR chiefs have defended the huge sums of money spent cleaning up Sellafield.

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority has denied it is unfairly concentrating its resources on the west Cumbrian complex at the expense of other decommissioning sites. Scottish trade unionists have complained that £8.5m has been cut from the budget of the Dounreay plant in Caithness.

There are concerns that the NDA has shown favouritism to Sellafield and the surrounding area in the allocation of its resources.

A spokesman for the NDA said Sellafield gets more money because it has “most of the high hazards”.

Richard Flynn, of the NDA, said: “It’s not the case that we’re favouring Sellafield. We have made it clear that our priority is on dealing with the high (radioactive) hazards first.

“The fact that most of the high hazards are at Sellafield means that they are bound to be getting more money than they did before.”

In its latest business plan, the authority makes clear that funding has been “re-prioritised” from other sites to Sellafield.

It goes on to state that this could lead to the future diversion of funding, which could stall planned activities at other sites.

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