ABSTRACT
The transfer of assets from the public sector to the private one requires their careful valuation, and the flotation of shares in particular requires that proper accounts are produced. Privatisation of the electricity supply industry, first in England and Wales, later in Scotland and eventually in Northern Ireland, was no exception. What the splitting up of the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) revealed was, among other things, the immense cost, previously hidden, of the British nuclear programme. High levels of uncertainty related to future costs and liabilities resulted in the withdrawing from the privatisation offer first of the old type Magnox nuclear power stations, and later on also the remaining ones. Depending on their location, North or South of the border, they became parts of Scottish Nuclear and Nuclear Electric respectively. Later on, i.e. in June 1990, the Energy Committee published one of the most damning accusations of incompetence in a Government department ever issued by a Commons select committee. Its report on the cost of nuclear power said that there was almost total failure on the part of the Department of Energy to monitor adequately cost information fed to it by the nuclear power industry.
