Heading for the Buffers – Government told it must pull the plug on West Cumbria’s current nuclear dump process or face community challenge.
Among a number of key issues raised in its response to the Department for Energy & Climate Change (DECC) consultation on identifying and assessing potential candidate sites for an underground nuclear waste dump, anti-nuclear group CORE has warned the Government that its Managing Radioactive Waste Safely (MRWS) process must now be abandoned until at least 2015 when the parliamentary constituency boundary changes proposed by the Boundary Commission for England (BCE) are ratified. The changes could see both Copeland and Allerdale expanded to include Central Lakeland communities.
The MRWS West Cumbria Partnership, which is carrying out the Government’s programme with a focus on West Cumbrian communities, is planning to advise Copeland, Allerdale and County Councils early in 2012 whether or not to move to the next crucial stage of the MRWS process – the ‘Decision to Participate’ – with the decision expected to be taken by the Councils later in 2012.
CORE’s spokesman Martin Forwood said today:
“The Government has to pull the plug on the process now. A Decision to Participate by the Councils before the constituency boundary changes are ratified in 2015 would be untenable and in direct contravention of the Government’s own guidelines on community volunteerism. The views and wishes of those many Lake District honey-pot communities such as Windermere, Ambleside, Grasmere, Hawkshead, Ullswater etc, whose local authorities have already firmly rejected the Government’s invitation to volunteer, and who may end up merged with Copeland and Allerdale under BCE’s proposals, will not have figured in the MRWS West Cumbria Partnership’s work and therefore not been part of the Council’s decision making”.
Acting under Government directions to streamline parliamentary constituency boundaries and voter-size in time for the next General Election, the BCE is proposing to reduce Cumbria’s six constituencies to five. Included in the five proposed newly named constituencies are ‘Copeland & Windermere’ and ‘Workington & Keswick’. The BCE’s public consultation on the changes ends on 5th December 2011.
Martin Forwood added:
“The BCE’s current proposals could change as a result of its own public consultation. But like the proverbial moving of deckchairs around the deck, other boundary change permutations available to it would all see some communities, currently outside the MRWS process, drawn within the unwelcome shadow of the dump and therefore disenfranchised in terms of a premature decision by the Councils”.
Pointing to its longstanding opposition to dumping nuclear waste deep underground and the weakness of a process that will see one small area only of the UK investigated for future development, CORE’s response to the DECC consultation also points out:
• the consultation document’s repeated reference to the ‘national process’ when many local consultees will know to their detriment that the pro-nuclear ambitions of its West Cumbrian local authorities have made it a purely West Cumbrian process
• the concerns raised by the Cumbrian Association of Local Councils (CALC) in relation to the perceived bias of the MRWS West Cumbria Partnership
• the failure of Government to attract Expressions of Interest from other parts of the UK with the inevitable result that the geological safety of any site developed in West Cumbria will always be viewed with the suspicion of being inferior to possibly more suitable sites elsewhere in the UK.
• the role of the NDA as Implementing Body for nuclear waste disposal in contravention of international principles which advocate independence between waste producers and waste dumpers. The NDA is a waste producer through its decommissioning programmes and its support for Sellafield’s reprocessing operations.
DECC’s public consultation: ‘Managing Radioactive Waste Safely: Desk-based Identification and Assessment of Potential Candidate Sites for Geological Disposal’ ended on 30th September 2011.