Nuclear safety would be threatened if private equity buys a key division of BNFL, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has been warned.

Fears have been raised as it is expected that the sale of the specialist engineering division will be pushed through quickly. Amicus has written to the DTI’s head of nuclear consultations and liabilities and to the finance director of BNFL to give warning against any sale to private equity of the project services operation.

Project services, which employs more than 700 people, looks after the equipment monitoring radiation safety and security for the Sellafield reprocessing centre, the old Magnox nuclear reactors. Mike Parker, the BNFL chief executive, has said that he wants “as quick a sale as we can possibly do” for the engineering division. All of BNFL is being broken up and sold by the DTI.

Amicus is concerned because of an expected bid from Barclays Capital for the business.

Dougie Rooney, the union’s national energy officer, said: “We are extremely concerned that the sale, which includes the maintenance of instrumentation which controls radiation, security and safety, may be purchased by a private equity company. We believe that this would be disastrous, undermining the safety of the site and result in BNFL being forced to make excessive payments for services which otherwise would have remained in-house.”

The union has asked the DTI to force BNFL to divulge the names of everyone who has expressed an interest in project services. Amicus believes that some parts of project services’ work would also be neglected by a buyer that did not have a strong track record in nuclear management.

Last month BNFL named the six bidders shortlisted for the Sellafield contract. They include Fluor, the US business.

It is understood that Fluor has pulled out of the bid to run the old Magnox sites to focus on the contract to manage Sellafield.

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