Clean-up work at all of the defunct nuclear reactors in the South of England is to be halted amid funding problems at the Nuclear Decommissioning Agency, The Times has learnt.

In its business plan, to be published next month, the NDA is expected to say that resources will be moved to Sellafield and that clean-up work will be suspended at the Sizewell A, Dungeness A, Hinkley Point A, Bradwell and Berkeley magnox reactors.

Unions fear that the move will cost hundreds of jobs and said that it will throw the NDA’s strategy into disarray.

The agency had already this month increased its cost estimate for cleaning all Britain’s closed nuclear stations by 16 per cent to £73 billion. It has also failed to drum up interest from the private sector in cleaning up the southern Magnox stations.

The suspension of the clean-up work has raised concerns that commercial confidence in the building of new nuclear stations will be dented.

Mike Graham, national officer for Prospect, the union, said: “The NDA strategy is in tatters. There is a complete lack of joined-up thinking and it doesn’t bode well for new build nuclear power in the future.”

Jim Watson of Sussex University’s energy group, said: “This feeds the argument that nuclear costs are high and uncertain and likely to keep rising. This has broader implications especially when economics is a key issue of new-build nuclear.”

An NDA spokesman would not comment on the details of the business plan but admitted that it was “prioritising spending towards higher hazards”.

The NDA’s business plan will be signed off when it has formal notification of its allocation from the Comprehensive Spending Review. Its budget for the next three years has been increased slightly on its previous allocation. However, the organisation’s cashflow has been damaged by problems at the Thorp reprocessing plant at Sellafield.

Thorp, which reprocesses fuel on a commercial basis for British Energy and overseas customers, has been out of action for nearly three years. It is due to resume substantial operations only in the new year after beginning tentative processing work to test the systems in the summer.

The NDA was hit last year by a spending shortfall, which had to be bolstered by the Department of Trade and Industry, now the Department for Business.

Despite the NDA’s difficulties its chief executive, Ian Roxburgh, last year received a bonus of £103,200 – half of his salary. A spokesman said the bonus was partly because of the achievement of a number of corporate targets, including putting the management of Sellafield and the other nuclear assets out to tender.

Times Recommends

• C&G axed - 1,660 jobs to be lost
• UK house prices rise 1.1% as buyers return
• Mixed reaction to US banks repaying bailouts