Around 10,000 people work at the Sellafield plant

Operators British Nuclear Group said the management posts would be lost through natural wastage and there would be no need for compulsory redundancies.

In a statement on Thursday, the company said the process would be carried out over the next two years.

The Sellafield site, which will be decommissioned over the next 10 years, employs about 10,000 people.

The company said the move was necessary to "drive out unnecessary bureaucracy from across the site".

Management re-structuring

Barry Snelson, managing director of Sellafield, said: "This is another step along the way of the change programme at Sellafield as we prepare for the future as a decommissioning and clean-up organisation.

"Just as we did with the senior management re-structuring, we will achieve this with prudence, sensitivity and always with safety as our guide."

Talks with union officials at the plant are ongoing.

Earlier this month it emerged a leak at Sellafield's Thorpe reprocessing complex lay undiscovered for three months.

More than 20 tonnes of uranium and 160kg of plutonium spewed onto a floor when a pipe fractured in January.

The British Nuclear Group, which carried out the inquiry, stressed that the material leaked into a sealed cell.

The discovery was made after a camera inspection of the cell in April.