UPDATE 1-Sellafield to be proposed for new UK nuclear plant

(Adds comment from EDF)

LONDON Jan 23 (Reuters) - Britain's Nuclear Decommissioning Authority plans to nominate four of its facilities, including the Sellafield nuclear fuel processing plant, as potential sites for new nuclear power stations, it said on Friday.

The public body, charged with closing down old nuclear facilities, said it would ask the government to consider Sellafield and the Wylfa, Oldbury and Bradwell power stations as good places for some of Europe's biggest utilities to build new reactors.

The government will consider site nominations from the NDA and other companies planning to build the plants that London hopes will replace Britain's ageing, state-built nuclear fleet.

"Nuclear is crucial to our low carbon future; it is crucial to our energy security and at the same time it represents a massive opportunity for the UK economy and jobs," Prime Minister Gordon Brown said in a statement prior to a visit to Sellafield in northwest England.

"During construction, each new station would bring as many as 9,000 jobs, create up to 1,000 skilled long-term jobs when operational, and be worth about 2 billion pounds ($2.76 billion) to the surrounding region and wider economy."

French nuclear energy giant EDF (EDF.PA), which is buying the owner of most of Britain's nuclear power plants, British Energy BGY.L, wants to build at least four new power stations.

EDF said on Friday it planned to nominate all of British Energy's sites for the government's strategic siting assessment (SSA) on Tuesday.

"EDF Energy intends to ensure that all our sites in England and Wales are nominated to the SSA process and we will work fully with the NDA so that we do not duplicate effort with regard to Wylfa and Bradwell," a spokesman for the world's biggest nuclear power generator said.

EDF has bought land next to Wyfla on the island of Angelsey and British Energy owns land near Bradwell.

Earlier this month German utilities RWE RWEGn.DE and E.ON (EONGn.DE) joined forces to build nuclear power stations in Britain, while Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE.L) and Spain's Iberdrola (IBE.MC) also plan to work together on new reactors.

Environmental campaigners Greenpeace said the government should focus on renewable energy.

"Brown should be making a clever investment in energy efficiency," Greenpeace said.

"This would create tens of thousands of British jobs, and also tackle fuel poverty and climate change in the fastest possible way."

Sellafield does not have the grid connections that the other three NDA sites do, potentially making building a power station there more expensive.

The Bradwell power station in Essex was closed in 2002, while Wylfa in north Wales and Bradwell in Gloucestershire are still running. (Reporting by Daniel Fineren, editing by Anthony Barker)