Voting 7 to 3 against moving to the next stage of the Government’s MRWS process, the County Council’s Cabinet decision represents not only a bold recognition of the level of opposition of Cumbrian communities but also a commitment to prevent the region being ‘prostituted’ by a Government plan that contained no Plan B.
Earlier in the day, in advance of the County’s decision, Allerdale Borough Council had been withdrawn from the process and Copeland Borough Council had, as expected, voted to continue in the process which would have seen increasingly intrusive geological investigations over the next decade in West Cumbria and the Lake District National Park.
In welcoming the Cabinet’s decision, CORE’s spokesman Martin Forwood said today:
‘This has effectively stopped the UK’s nuclear waste disposal juggernaut in its tracks and, in a repeat of the rejected NIREX plans of the 1990’s, put back the UK’s waste dumping plans to square one and the responsibility back again at a national level where it belongs’.
During the years it will take to initiate new plans, the UK’s higher activity nuclear wastes will, as is already the case, remain stored above ground at the sites of origin and an enhancement of the storage facilities at Sellafield has been promised as a result of today’s decision. This long-term storage option, championed by CORE and others in preference to underground dumping will again ‘be in the frame’ as UK policy. This despite the petulant claim on BBC Radio Cumbria yesterday by MP Jamie Reed that, irrespective of the County Council’s decision, he would seek to keep Copeland in the MRWS process on its own – and the equally optimistic reaction of Minister Ed Davey that, even now, other UK local authorities will come forward to volunteer their communities.
Martin Forwood added: We will continue to oppose underground dumping anywhere in the UK. With significant blight from at least one major nuclear proposal now averted, Cumbria can now look forward to attracting non-nuclear inward investment and diversifying its local economy towards a safer and clean future for all its communities’.