Sellafield firm reports £303m losses

British state-owned nuclear firm BNFL reported wider annual losses of £303m (€459.5m) today after seeing costs increase at operations including Sellafield.

BNFL’s chief executive Michael Parker described the loss as “disappointing” but said the financial position of the business was about to change dramatically following the creation a new company to take care of decommissioning issues.

Today’s loss before exceptional items compared with a deficit of £261m (€396m) a year earlier.

Warrington-based BNFL said nuclear clean-up liabilities had increased costs at Sellafield, Cumbria, while there was also the impact of start-up costs for a plant set up to manufacture Mox fuel, also at Sellafield.

Since the start of the new financial year, BNFL has put its clean-up activities into a separate company as it prepares for next year’s creation of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority – a British government body to oversee the clean-up of nuclear sites in the UK.

The new business, called British Nuclear Group, has annual turnover of almost £2bn (€3bn) and employs 15,000 people in work including nuclear reprocessing at Sellafield and the decommissioning of Magnox reactors around the UK.

Mr Parker said: “The loss sustained by the group in 2003/04 is disappointing, but the financial position will change dramatically once the DNA takes responsibility for a significant portion of our assets and liabilities as well as the legacy issues.”

As well as Westinghouse, BNFL will have a research and development unit and a business handling spent nuclear fuel.