Magnox South Ltd, a company owned by EnergySolutions, is the management and operations contractor currently responsible for decommissioning five nuclear sites on behalf of their owner, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA).
The five sites are: Hinkley Point A in Somerset; Berkeley in Gloucestershire; Sizewell A in Suffolk; Bradwell in Essex and Dungeness A in Kent.
All safely generated electricity during their lifetimes with the last two operational stations – Sizewell A and Dungeness A - ceasing generation at the end of 2006. The sites are in different stages of decommissioning and under current plans it is likely to be many years before the sites are totally cleared.
When a station ceases generation the risks begin to diminish although safety will always remain the top priority. At three of the sites, Berkeley; Hinkley Point A and Bradwell, all the highly radioactive spent fuel has been removed and returned to Sellafield in Cumbria for reprocessing. That means at those sites around 99 per cent of the radioactivity has been removed from site.