A MERGER of the parent companies for Berkeley and Oldbury nuclear power stations planned for this year will cut costs, but also result in job losses at the two sites.

Site director at Oldbury Power Station Joe Lamonby said plans were underway to reintegrate Magnox North, which runs Oldbury Power Station, and Magnox South, which runs Berkeley Power Station to create one company. The decision has been made in the light of decommissioning due to start at Oldbury in the next few years, which will mean fewer staff on site.

It is believed that the two sites can be run just as effectively by one board of directors and one headquarters, although they will both retain site managers. Mr Lamonby told a community meeting last week: "There are some advantages of only having one headquarters, you only need one set of directors and you can share information and work together on projects.

"It is something I am confident can be done and we will be bringing them together at the end of this year." Reintegrating the companies would create a Single Licence Company (SLC) and after the merger takes place Mr Lamonby said he hoped the company would be fully operational by April 1, 2011.

At the same meeting members were given details of an annual report called Environmental Monitoring and Public Dose Assessment, which looked at levels of contamination in the local area for 2009. Studies are done during the year around Oldbury and Berkeley to test air quality, pollution and the amount of radiation found in the earth, wildlife and in the food chain. Paul Mountford-Lister, of the Environment Agency, said the levels were all well below legal limits of what is deemed safe.

The report's conclusions were that aerial discharges in 2009 from Oldbury increased slightly due to increased operation on the site, but liquid discharges remained constant or decreased.

Berkeley’s aerial and liquid discharges remained constant. The monitoring did not identify any significant increases in radiation in the environment, however a slight upward trend was identified in fish in the River Severn, which is still well below legal limits but is currently being investigated.