News : Letter from the Partnership to the Whitehaven News on 25th November
Dear Sir,
Jean McSorley makes some interesting points in her letter about a possible underground facility for higher activity radioactive waste in West Cumbria (Whitehaven News 11th November).
The West Cumbria Managing Radioactive Waste Safely Partnership is looking at whether this area should take part in the Government’s search for somewhere to locate a repository, without making any commitment.
This community Partnership includes organisations from across Cumbria such as local authorities, parish councillors, the Lake District National Park, Churches Together in Cumbria and the National Farmers Union. We have also invited Greenpeace to take part.
This is a unique process. As a community we have the power to decide whether or not to have this facility here.
These are complex issues and they need careful consideration. As Jean McSorley is aware, we are currently looking at what might go into a repository, including possible waste from new nuclear power stations and what the effect of that would be.
We certainly do not have all the answers yet. We are asking the Government a lot of questions, speaking to experts and commissioning research.
However, we should not wait to discuss this issue with local people until we have the full picture. We want the public to be involved from the start.
We are doing a lot of work to ensure that people are fully informed and involved. This has included large articles in Cumbrian papers and in publications like Your Cumbria, as well as a newsletter sent to homes in West Cumbria.
We have organised community drop in events across the county. Steve Balogh asks why there are also events in areas where the underground repository could not go. We believe people in other parts of the county, have a right to know about these issues and express their views.
There is also a discussion pack and DVD which people can use to talk about the issues and then send us their views.
We will be holding more events later next year before the Partnership makes a recommendation on whether West Cumbria should take part in the search for a site.
Even if this area does take part in this process we can say no to a facility up until the point when work could start on building it, probably more than a decade from now.
I urge everyone in Cumbria to find out more and get involved. For more information visit www.westcumbriamrws.org.uk.
You can also contact us by calling a free helpline on 0800 048 8912 or by emailing contact@westcumbriamrws.org.uk. We also have a Facebook page and you can follow @westcumbriamrws on Twitter.
Councillor Tim Knowles
Chairman, West Cumbria Managing Radioactive Waste Safely Partnership
You can see the letters from Jean McSorley and Steve Balogh, which were published in the Whitehaven News the previous week, below and on the Whitehaven News website:
SIR – We Cumbrians are being asked whether the UK’s most highly radioactive wastes should be disposed of right here (“Have your say on nuclear waste”, The Whitehaven News, November 11). But people are not being told the whole story.
Information already distributed on this issue certainly doesn’t contain all the key information. It’s the Government’s intention that a dump should also hold the waste from any new nuclear plants, besides existing waste, but this gets barely a mention. That new waste would be three times as radioactive as existing waste isn’t mentioned.
The above-ground facilities could be up to 12 miles away from the dump, and could involve the storage of highly radioactive spent fuel for many decades. But the details of what the above-ground plants could entail hardly gets a look in.
Who made the decision to leave out essential information on new- build wastes and the above-ground facilities until ‘later in the process’? Don’t people have the right to the full picture now?
Jean McSORLEY
Consultant
Greenpeace Nuclear Campaign
SIR – The West Cumbria Managing Radioactive Waste Safely Partnership has organised what it is calling ‘Community Drop-in Events’ in various centres of population around Cumbria for people to voice their opinions on their plans.
The British Geological Survey has published its exclusion zones where the MRWS will not be considering a deep disposal facility. Many of the places in which people are invited to ‘drop in’ are in these exclusion zones – Wigton, Workington, Whitehaven. Others are not in West Cumbria at all – Barrow, Penrith, Kendal and Carlisle.
But the people of Cockermouth, Cleator Moor and Egremont etc. who are NOT in an exclusion zone do not get a drop-in event in their area. It speaks volumes about the process of consultation which is being pursued here.
Steve BALOGH
Loweswater Hall, Cockermouth