SCIENCE and engineering firm AEA Technology says it will benefit from major projects to decommission power stations on the Chernobyl site.

The company, which has its headquarters at Harwell, recently won a contract for on-site assistance at Chernobyl and said money was only now starting to flow from western nations to improve the site's safety.

Money has been approved to ensure the long-term safety of Chernobyl reactors in the last 14 months, and six major clean-up and decommissioning contracts are now up for grabs.

Deputy chief executive Mel Wood said: "Until now, Chernobyl has not really received much Western money. It has got to the situation now where something has to be done."

Unveiling a major growth in its profits for the last year, AEA Technology, the privatised spin-off from the UK nuclear industry, said Eastern Europe was its main potential market to grow its nuclear engineering division.

Despite high-profile decommissioning plans such as those recently announced for Dounreay in Scotland, the arrival of competitive tendering in the UK has eroded AEA Technology's lion's share of the market.

Pre-tax profits in the year to March 31 grew from £18.5m to £29m, with turnover up from £264.3m to £308.4m.

The group said it was keen to grow in the lucrative battery market, where it is already one of the biggest technology groups in Europe. It has patented a long life lithium-ion battery and is developing a paper-thin rechargeable battery.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.