In a sign of the deepening crisis enveloping the dome, ministers have ordered English Partnerships, which owns the land the attraction is built on, to examine "all options" when it closes at the end of the year.
The plans include the possibility of dismantling the dome and selling off the land, a humiliating end to a project once hailed by Tony Blair as a symbol of "British flair and genius".
English Partnerships said it was issued with fresh instructions by the government yesterday after Nomura announced that it had "reluctantly withdrawn" from negotiations to take over the dome - whose cost has spiralled to £836m - because of worries about the "black hole" in the records of its assets.
Only last week David James, the troubleshooter brought to salvage something from the wreckage of the "greatest show on earth", described the £105m Nomura deal as a "killing... We are selling the place for a fraction of its value."
But yesterday, despite protests from Mr James that Nomura's qualms were a "list of excuses that don't stand up to scrutiny", Guy Hands, head of the Nomura bid, said he could not go ahead while denied access to the report by auditors PricewaterhouseCoopers which sparked the latest £47m bail-out last week.
"You don't buy a house without knowing whether you are getting the fittings," his spokesman said, denying accusations from the dome that Nomura was pulling out merely to drive a harder deal. "There is a gap between what is in the dome and what they have on their register of assets. We just didn't know what we were getting and what liabilities we would be left with."
Trevor Beattie, a spokesman for English Partnerships, said yesterday: "Now that Nomura have regrettably gone we have been asked to look at all the options for the site." Asked whether this could include dismantling the dome, Mr Beattie said: "Yes."
He stressed that the dome minister, Lord Falconer, still wanted the Greenwich site to remain open. Last night the consortium, Legacy plc, which lost out to Nomura to take over the dome, reopened talks with the government.
A spokesman for the group which wants to turn the dome into Knowledge City, based around IT businesses, said it had lowered its bid by £20m to match Nomura's £105m.
Lord Falconer, who spent three hours trying to persuade Nomura not to pull out, again faced calls last night to resign.
Shadow culture secretary Peter Ainsworth said: "Since Lord Falconer is obviously not going to resign, the prime minister must sack him. The time has come to open up the books. Every time the public is told nothing more can go wrong, it does. Nobody is going to buy a pig in a poke. Who would buy a used dome from this government?"
