THE operators of Didcot Power Station have ruled out any possibility of a nuclear power station being built on the site.

With the Government last week approving a new generation of nuclear power stations, attention focused on Didcot and Harwell, which were both mentioned in a report last year on potential sites.

But John Rainford, the station manager for Didcot A, moved to end further speculation by saying there was no chance of the power station being given serious consideration.

Mr Rainford said: "The Didcot site will not be considered for the building of a new nuclear power station. The overwhelming consensus is that the best places for the construction of any new nuclear power stations would be on, or directly adjacent to the nuclear power stations we have already, which are all located on the coast.

"Didcot A and B provide valuable electricity to the south of England, and will continue to do this into the future"

UKAEA was almost as adamant in discounting the idea of the atomic research site at Harwell going on any shortlist.

A spokesman at the UKAEA said it would be seeing through its mission of cleaning up the Harwell site of nuclear materials and developing the site as an international innovation centre.

The Business Secretary, John Hutton, told MPs the Government would be publishing plans to encourage the private sector to build more nuclear power stations.

Fears of one of the nuclear power stations being built in the Didcot area were sparked by a paper from the leading energy analyst Ian Jackson, who worked at Harwell between 1986 and 1993.

He said both Harwell and Didcot met key criteria, such as location history and ease of connection to the national grid. His report added that a new power station would require vast cooling towers "as used by conventional coal and gas fired generating stations such as Didcot".

RWE npower, who operate Didcot power station, said the company would "consider" developing a nuclear power station at a different site in the UK.

But it would certainly be near the coast, and where there was already public acceptance of such a facility.

The Jackson's report's reference to the Harwell site caused surprise, because the decommissioning exercise to transform the former headquarters of the UK civil nuclear research programme into a science and innovation campus was so advanced. More than a third of the £900m clean-up has already been completed, with 140 facilities removed and three areas of contaminated land cleared.

A UKAEA spokesman said it was fully focused on demonstrating that nuclear facilities could be decommissioned safely and economically.

She said: "The UKAEA's task at Harwell is to manage its environmental restoration programmes and the redevelopment of the land released as a result.

"This includes the decommissioning of redundant nuclear facilities, the management of radioactive wastes from past programmes of work and decommissioning projects, and the remediation of any contaminated land.

"By doing our job well, we will demonstrate that nuclear facilities can be decommissioned economically, safely, and without harming the environment."

The clean-up aspects of its programme are managed by UKAEA under contract to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.

Mr Hutton predicted there would be "several" new nuclear power plants operating in the UK by the mid-2020s - with the first completed "well before 2020".

A "strategic siting assessment" to help identify the most suitable sites for new build will be completed by next year.