American-Japanese consortium has emerged as a surprise rival to British Energy in the race to build a new generation of nuclear power stations in the UK.

EnergySolutions, a nuclear services company based in Salt Lake City, Utah, is working on a plan to build and operate a new nuclear reactor at Wylfa on Anglesey, The Times has learnt. It has teamed up with Toshiba-Westinghouse, the Japanese-owned supplier of nuclear reactor technology. They have held talks with several European and British utilities companies about forming a separate new-build consortium to the one involving British Energy.

The proposed site at Wylfa is next to an existing nuclear reactor that is to be retired from service in 2010 and lies on land owned by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA).

The Government estimates that any new reactor would cost about £2.8 billion to build.

EnergySolutions has been active in Britain since June last year, when it bought Reactor Sites Management Company (RSMC) from British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL). Through RSMC's subsidiary Magnox Electric, the company holds the contracts and licences to operate and decommission ten British nuclear sites with 22 reactors on behalf of the NDA - the body responsible for the clean-up and decommissioning of nuclear sites previously owned by BNFL.

At two of these facilities - the existing reactor at Wylfa and another at Oldbury, Gloucestershire - EnergySolutions generates electricity for the national grid. It is dismantling others on behalf of the NDA.

EnergySolutions's proposal is to build a new reactor at Wylfa while helping to dismantle the old one. Any application to build a new reactor in the UK would be subject to a rigorous planning and design assessment before it would be approved.

EnergySolutions is a leading player in the nuclear decommissioning market in the United States. It has worked for the US Government at sensitive nuclear military sites including Los Alamos, New Mexico, where the atomic bomb was first developed.

Plans for a new reactor in Anglesey could be controversial. However, there is considerable local support on Anglesey for a new reactor, which would attract new investment and would create jobs.

Anglesey Aluminium, the island's other big employer, is also the largest single consumer of electricity in the UK. It is under threat of closure because of the retirement of the existing reactor at Wylfa so a replacement plant could, in theory, secure its future.

However, the Welsh Assembly has declared itself in opposition to any new nuclear reactors being built in Wales.

The proposal for a new reactor is the only new-build project to have emerged that is unlikely to involve British Energy, the UK's leading nuclear generator, which produces one sixth of the UK's electricity.

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