CONCERNS have been raised that thousands of jobs will be lost at Sellafield, as operations end at Magnox reprocessing plant.

Councillor Edwin Dinsdale, who works at Sellafield, fears that thousands of workers will be made redundant over the next few years, after the Magnox plant stops reprocessing on July 17.

It comes after reprocessing ended at Sellafield’s Thorp plant in November 2018. But Sellafield say they “do not currently expect any job losses” as a result of the decision to cease reprocessing operations in the Magnox plant. Speaking at a Whitehaven Town Council meeting on Thursday, Cllr Dinsdale said: “I would say that we must be the most reliant on the nuclear industry, in the whole of the UK.

With the direction that the nuclear industry is going, from a job security point of view, a lot of it was based around these two mains streams of reprocessing.

“I’m concerned, for this town, around the direction the nuclear industry is going. Whether you work in retail, a supermarket, or a bank, everything is underpinned within this town, by the nuclear industry.

“We need to know what’s the strategy and what’s going to be in there to mitigate the thousands of jobs that will go, and what impact that will have to the people we represent and the town we represent.”

Councillor Ray Gill said he supported Cllr Dinsdale and suggested that Whitehaven Town Council should have a seat on the strategic nuclear enterprise board, run by Copeland Council. “All this is going on within the area and everyone seems to be involved with it – but we’re not,”

Cllr Gill said. “It’s about time we got ourselves involved, so the biggest town council in the constituency knows what’s going on.”

A Sellafield Ltd spokesman said: “We do not currently expect there to be any job losses as a result of the decision to cease reprocessing operations in the Magnox plant.

“The number of people required to clean-out the plant over the next two years is similar to the number of people needed to run it for operations.

“A large proportion of the workforce are remaining in the plant to manage this process. Anyone not required for this will be redeployed to other roles within the business.”

Cllr Dinsdale proposed to write to key stakeholders in the nuclear industry and request to have a town council representative at meetings.