A ROW has erupted over whether an ex-nuclear worker should be removed from his job as watchdog for Hinkley Point power station.

Mike Short is chairman of the plant's stakeholder group, which allows people to ask questions to challenge how the station is run.

He insists his 14-year stint as a nuclear engineer at Hinkley Point does not affect his ability to lead the independent group.

But Kerry Rickards, chief executive of Sedgemoor District Council, has called for him to stand down because he feels this dual role does not look right in the eyes of the public.

The council chief said that if the situation does not change, the authority might reconsider its membership of the stakeholder group.

Mr Rickards said: "I don't doubt his integrity but from the outside looking in people may just find it a little bit odd that the independent chairman is actually an ex-employee, even though it was ten to 12 years ago.

"I think it's important to have a truly independent person, in every sense of the word, chairing this stakeholder group."

Mr Short, who lives in Fiddington, near Bridgwater, said he had no reason to step down.

He worked at Hinkley Point A, which is now being decommissioned, between 1980 and 1994, as an engineer and member of the safety team He said everyone knew his past when they voted him into the position and has never let his former allegiance affect his work.

"I was elected by a democratic process and at the time I declared my former employment within the nuclear industry and the site stakeholder group accepted that," he said.

"I challenge Kerry Rickards to come up with any instance where I have been showed to have been biased."

He added that his former employment was an advantage because he tended to ask more probing questions.

"When people start asking questions and the company gives an answer, if you don't know anything about it you won't know if the answer is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth," he argued.

The Nuclear Decommissioning Agency, which owns Hinkley Point and set up the stakeholder group in April 2005, said Mr Short was entitled to be chairman.

Spokesman Bill Hamilton said: "The fact that he used to work for the plant is completely irrelevant. He never worked for the NDA."