A NORTH-EAST Euro-MP has criticised the millions of pounds spent on nuclear decommissioning.

Fiona Hall, Liberal Democrat Euro MP for the region, said the current cost of UK decommissioning was £48bn.

She said that, in the past, nuclear power plants were built without an assessment of their 'whole life' costs, including decommissioning and the cost of nuclear waste

Ms Hall, who was speaking during a debate in the European Parliament on the use of money earmarked for nuclear decommissioning, claimed that if the Government were to lift its moratorium on building new nuclear power stations, it could look at existing sites such as Hartlepool for development.

She said: "Successive governments - in other words taxpayers - have had to bail out the nuclear industry to the tune of billions of pounds.

"Failing to take the cost of decommissioning into account has meant that nuclear power has been made to look a much cheaper source of electricity than it really is.

"The so called 'expensive' renewable sources of electricity do not have the clean-up costs of nuclear."