POWER companies are to be offered a new range of potential sites to construct nuclear power stations in Britain.

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), a government agency in charge of the £70 billion-plus clean-up of the UK atomic legacy, is expected to open talks shortly.

It is likely to announce in the next few weeks an invitation for utility groups to come forward with plans for using parts of its estate. The NDA has 19 sites in the UK, the largest and best known being the complex at Sellafield on the Cumbrian coast. It also owns all the Magnox power stations, which were Britain’s first nuclear power plants. All but two of these have been shut.

The NDA move matches that begun last year by British Energy, the quoted group that owns and runs the rest of the UK’s nuclear power stations. In January the government threw its weight behind a new generation of nuclear power stations.

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