Magnox to slash 1,600 nuclear power jobs
Nuclear power company Magnox is looking to cut 1,600 jobs across its 12 sites by September 2016.
Sites have steadily been decommissioned, with eleven of the plants no longer producing power and another in North Wales due to close next year.
However, trade union Unite warned the move could lead to "a loss of vital skills and expertise in the nuclear industry".
Kevin Coyne, the union's officer for energy has proposed an urgent meeting with the company to negotiate the redundancies.
Magnox argued that the cuts to both agency and contracted staff were inevitable as operations have shrunk significantly over the last 10 years.
"These proposed reductions arise from planned step downs in the work programme at a number of sites and the implementation of a more streamlined operating model for delivering decommissioning," the company said.
"We will seek wherever possible for these reductions to be through voluntary means and we will endeavour to retrain staff in roles where we are currently reliant on agency resources."