Cumbrians to vote on radioactive waste dump
9:30PM GMT 26 Jan 2013
Britain’s nuclear industry faces a crucial test this week as Cumbrian councils vote on the next stage of plans for a £12bn radioactive waste dump amid mounting local opposition.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/n...aste-dump.html


The industry argues that the search for a nuclear burial site in the county must continue - with fears that a proposed new generation of nuclear power plants could be threatened by a 'no’ decision.

But fierce local opposition to the waste dump has grown ahead of Wednesday’s crunch vote, with a protest walk held on Saturday in Ennerdale, which is feared could be a possible burial site.

Campaigners argue the dump would harm the Lake District national park and its tourism industry.

Opponents also claim that existing studies of Cumbria show its geology is unlikely to be safe for radioactive waste storage and that testing for sites will therefore be a damaging waste of millions of pounds.

The eventual underground facility could be up to 3km squared and up to 1km below ground, taking decades to construct and fill, with the waste remaining radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years.

The three councils - Cumbria County Council, Copeland Borough Council and Allerdale Borough Council - delayed voting on the search from October to this week amid concerns including over whether they have a legally binding right to back out at a later date.

The Friends of the Lake District group has called on councils to reject the plans and more than 16,000 people have signed a petition opposing the dump.

Campaigner Harry Marsland of NoLakesNukeDump said: “I am not anti-nuclear and neither are the vast majority of fellow campaigners. We are simply pro-Lake District.

It is no place for such a massive industrial investigation and construction”.

But supporters say the waste dump would bring jobs and investment to the region and that a final vote on the project would be years away.

Unite the union on Friday said the 12,000 workers at Sellafield in Cumbria, where much of Britains existing nuclear waste is stored above ground, believed the site assessments must continue.

“Britain has been searching for a national waste repository for over 30 years. The Sellafield workforce... don’t want another 30 years of drift and delay,” it said.

Councils were only voting to allow 'desk-based’ studies and there would be no digging of possible sites at this stage, it added.

The government has said it will not impose nuclear waste on a hostile community but no other area has volunteered to consider 'hosting’ the waste.

Cumbria's withdrawal could raise the prospect of legal challenges against new nuclear plants, because of a 2008 government pledge that they would only be consented if “effective arrangements exist or will exist” for their waste.

Sir David King, former chief scientific adviser, warned in December that without a positive decision, new nuclear development could be put at risk.

Lord Hutton, the former defence secretary who is now chairman of the Nuclear Industry Association, wrote in The Sunday Telegraph last month that it was no longer possible to pass the buck and that the research on a suitable waste site should go ahead.

A DECC spokesman played down previous studies showing that the geology of the region was unsuitable, and said there was no reason to think tourism would be negatively affected by a nuclear dump.