Debate returns on radioactive waste store in Cumbria
Report by Hannah McNulty
An exhibition roadshow has started today with the aim of providing information on the possibility of an underground store for radioactive waste from the nuclear industry in west Cumbria.
Plans to create such a setup - known as a geological disposal facility (GDF) - were first considered almost 10 years ago and were rejected by Cumbria County Council.
The Government though has restarted its search for a community in which to locate such a store and an organisation - Copeland GDF Working Group - has been set up to "explore whether a GDF would be right for Copeland". A similar group has also been set up in Allerdale.
A GDF is a place where radioactive waste from the nuclear industry - which accounts for about fifth of the UK's electricity - would be stored several hundred metres underground. It needs to have enough volume of rock surrounding it to prevent harmful quantities radiation reaching the atmosphere.
It would be made up of highly engineered vaults and waste would be stored there while its radioactivity naturally decays to safe levels.
The plans are being explored by Radioactive Waste Management (RWM), a subsidiary of the Nuclear Decommissioning Agency, which is itself part of the Department for Business, energy and Industrial Strategy.
RWM has said that a GDF would be the safest way to story radioactive waste in the long-term.
Events are taking place throughout Copeland this month, starting in the Beacon Project in Whitehaven today.
Working group chair, Mark Cullinan, said:
More details on evens can be found here.
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