UKAEA Ltd will deploy about a dozen executives, currently in senior posts at Dounreay, to direct the decommissioning programme. At the same time, nearly all the 1065-strong UKAEA workforce will transfer to the newly-formed Dounreay Site Restoration Ltd (DSRL).

The move is subject to regulators approving the transfers of the site operating licence and other authorisations from the publicly-owned UK Atomic Energy Authority.

The workforce have been assured their existing pay and conditions will be protected in the move to their new employer.

UKAEA Ltd's tenure will be relatively short if it loses out in its bid to continue to run the site when the management contract is put out to competitive tender.

Major international nuclear corporations are expected to submit offers in the exercise being overseen by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.

In the meantime, DSRL will be run by staff seconded from UKAEA Ltd and its joint venture partners, American corporation CH2M Hill and UK-based AMEC.

They include the current site director, former naval officer Simon Middlemas, whose new title will be managing director of DSRL. All but 95 of the existing workforce are to transfer to the site licence company.

A total of 70 based at Forss are to transfer to UKAEA Ltd to develop business development opportunities. A further 25 information technology staff are to remain with the UKAEA.

Speaking at last week's meeting of Dounreay Stakeholder Group, Mr Middlemas acknowledged the changeover is not straightforward.

Group chairman Alastair MacDonald said: "This was going to be a seamless process. It's perhaps not been as easy as we expected.

Mr Middlemas replied: "The process itself has been rather complicated. But the site just now has exactly the right configuration for the change on April 1 as it went through major changes two years ago and has been working in shadow form for some time."

Mr Middlemas said the reorganisation is needed to gear up for the site's management going out to competitive tender.

UKAEA Ltd is to own DSRL but the latter would hold the site licence.

He said: "UKAEA Ltd will be made up of people like me who would have the responsibility to safely and efficiently decommission the site and make profits."

Mr Middlemas said the management contract process had been delayed by up to a year, with the successful bidder now not likely to be installed before 2010. The joint venture bid is being tabled under the Pentland Alliance banner.

Mr Middlemas said: "We will be one of the tenders. We don't know who else will bid, though we can guess.

"Hopefully we'll be successful but I'm sure there will interest from others such as Bechtel, Fluor and the Washington Group International."

The site licence transfer has to be approved by on-site regulator, the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate. One of Dounreay's NII inspectors, Lyn Bevington, confirmed that it is working to have the licence in the hands of DSRL by the end of the current financial year.

He said: "It's a very difficult and protracted process to go through but our relicensing target is April 1.

Mr Bevington said Dounreay was further ahead of other sites in its preparations for the new management regime.

He explained: "Dounreay has been operating since January 2006 in a structure fairly similar to what it will be in the future. Unlike other sites, the changeover shouldn't be too traumatic.

"It is, however, going from a UKAEA operation to a stand-alone site and that is an issue we're looking at very carefully."

A UKAEA spokesman yesterday said the existing workforce should notice very little change.

He said: "Because of the major reorganisation several years ago, we've been acting as if we were a site licence company.

"People therefore shouldn't feel any real change from the last working day in March and the first working day in April. They will be doing the same job and have the same terms and conditions."

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