Consortium loses UK's Sellafield nuclear waste clean-up contract

* Gov't ends contract with Sellafield management firm

* Areva, Aecom and Amec Foster Wheeler (Other OTC: AMCBF - news) in consortium

* NMP was criticised last year for spending too much money

LONDON, Jan 13 (Reuters) - An international consortium managing Britain's Sellafield nuclear waste site clean-up is to be stripped of the multi-billion-pound contract, the British government said on Tuesday.

The consortium, Nuclear Management Partners (NMP), includes France's Areva, U.S. engineering firm Aecom and Britain's Amec Foster Wheeler.

It oversees activities at Sellafield including the decommissioning of a nuclear power plant and the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel from stations around the world.

It has managed the site in northern England since 2008 and Britain's Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), which owns Sellafield, extended the contract for a further five years in 2013.

However, last year Britain's Committee of Public Accounts said NMP was spending too much money and that its contract should be cancelled if it did not improve.

"The NDA has concluded that a change in model is now the best way forward," Britain's energy and climate change secretary Ed Davey said in a statement.

"It is now clear that Sellafield's complexity and technical uncertainties present significantly greater challenges than other NDA sites," he said.

The site is therefore less well-suited to being managed fully by the private sector, he said.

Under the changes, Sellafield Limited will become a subsidiary of the NDA and will appoint a strategic partner to strengthen management at the site, the government said.

"We are surprised and naturally disappointed, especially in light of the considerable progress made at Sellafield since NMP was awarded the contract in 2008," NMP said in a statement.

($1 = 0.6605 pounds) (Reporting by Nina Chestney; editing by Jason Neely)