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Nuclear auction - doing it the eBay way
15 Apr 2009The eBay style auction of three new nuclear sites at existing old magnox reactors in Essex, Gloucestershire and Wales is set to raise hundreds of millions of pounds.
The auction — now in its fifth week — will close when no new bid on the sites has been submitted for more than 24 hours.
The auction is being run along the same lines as the 3G mobile telecoms auction in 2000 which raised £22 billion for the Government.
This auction, however, is being run behind closed doors by the property agent Colliers on behalf of the Government's nuclear agency.
The money raised will be barely a fraction of the sum the 3G auction generated. But it will go a little way to offsetting the total taxpayer bill of £70 billion to clean up the country's old nuclear sites.
