BRITISH Energy is axing 400 jobs over the next four years in an attempt to reduce UK nuclear generating costs by £150m.

The job losses, mostly voluntary redundancies, will predominately be in the generating division of the Scottish group.

The two support centres, in East Kilbride, near Glasgow, and Barnwood, Gloucestershire, are expected to take the brunt of the cuts.

However, there are also likely to be job losses at the company's eight nuclear power stations including the site in Hartlepool, which employs about 450. It provides power for the whole of Teesside and most of Tyneside.

Other sites under threat include Hunterston and Torness, Scotland; two on the West Coast of Lancashire; Sizewell B near Leiston in Suffolk; Hinkley Point B near Bridgewater in Somerset and Dungeness B in Kent.

British Energy will announce its full-year results on Wednesday and is expected to report a sharp fall in pre-tax profits, from £241m last year to little more than £8m.

Low levels of nuclear output and a decline in wholesale electricity prices are expected to be blamed for the slide.

The Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union (AEEU) said it was "totally opposed" to the redundancies.

"We are deeply concerned about how the company can put these redundancies into practice without compromising the operational safety of power stations," said national officer Dougie Rooney.

Meanwhile, British Energy has moved closer to sourcing the majority of its profits from North America after completing a £140m deal with Canadian utility Ontario Power Generation. British Energy's Canadian subsidiary Bruce Power has leased two nuclear power stations from state-owned OPG - the stations have six reactors between them.

When the Ontario market deregulates in May 2002, the electricity will be sold direct to customers. Until then, it will be sold back to OPG.

Eventually British Energy aims to use the power stations to sell into the US as well as Canada.

The North American market has been identified by British Energy as the future source of most of its profits.

The group said that the Canadian stations should generate £20m profit per reactor per year by the beginning of 2004.