US firm joins race to clear up Sellafield

The £1 billion-a-year contract to clean up the Sellafield nuclear power plant in Cumbria could go abroad.

The Department for Business is set to announce in the coming weeks the contractor for Sellafield, the single biggest nuclear decommissioning project in a £70 billion bonanza for engineering firms.

Until now it had been assumed a consortium led by the US engineering giant Bechtel which included the UK services group Serco was frontrunner for the work.

Amid claims that the Government's Nuclear Decommissioning Agency would prefer to work with a single company on Sellafield, the rival American firm CH2M Hill has emerged a joint favourite for the job.

While CH2M Hill has a strong reputation in the US, Bechtel is seen as New Labour's favourite big project engineer, having performed bailout jobs on the Underground and the high-speed link to the Channel Tunnel. Serco runs London's traffic lights and the Docklands Light Railway.