Fears as US firm eyes Dounreay takeover bid:Bechtel

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The dangerous work of decommissioning the Dounreay nuclear plant could end up being given to an American multinational with an inside track to the government and a record of safety violations.
“Doing a favour for a large American company, whose record on the environment is, to say the least, dodgy. Bechtel should immediately be debarred from bidding for any of this work.”Bechtel is one of the world’s largest engineering and construction companies, with revenues of $16.3 billion in 2003.

It has run 22,000 projects in 140 countries over the past century, including the Channel Tunnel, Hong Kong Inter national Airport and cleaning up after America’s worst nuclear accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979. It is currently heavily involved in the reconstruction of Iraq.

The company has, however, been fined four times in the past two years for safety violations in the US. In one incident in November 2003, one of its joint ventures was fined $192,500 for failing to control radioactive contamination at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee . In addition, Bechtel companies have faced three other enforcement actions from the US authorities for alleged breaches of safety regulations.

“We aren’t happy with the situation. We are aware of Bechtel’s track record and we aren’t exactly enamoured,” said Ian Clark, the Prospect trade union co-ordinator for the UKAEA. He described the dual role of Bechtel as government adviser and potential bidder as “incestuous”. He was concerned that the company was anti-union, and feared that the competitive bidding process could undermine safety. “It may increase pressure to cut corners in order to compete with outside companies,” he argued.



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