Millom and District are organising against the nuclear dump. Within three days over 300 folk joined their facebook group showing the strength of feeling in Millom and District against the plan to dump heat generating nuclear wastes beneath the Irish Sea. Here is their leaflet – information on one side and a poster to display on the other. Please do feel free to download the poster and print out freely to give to your friends and family.

Radiation Free Lakeland 23rd June 2022 read more »

Letter: MICHAEL Russell’s otherwise excellent spiel (Indy papers will be factual antidote to Project Fear, June 18) was spoiled by his including Dounreay in a list of Tory-inflicted damage to Scotland’s economy when it ceased generating electricity in 1994. It never produced more electricity than it consumed, and it continues to be a massive burden on the economy and will, by official industry estimates, require such expense for another 400 years. Its toxic waste will remain lethal for more than 1000 years, either stored (that which hasn’t already spread who knows where) and monitored, or, more likely dumped in a hole, probably to haunt many future generations of Scots.

The National 22nd June 2022 read more »

The UK is searching the sea for a nuclear dump site with huge risks to marine life. A new report delivers a damning verdict on the proposed seismic blasting in the Irish Sea. The UK government’s Nuclear Waste Services (NWS) is set to carry out seismic surveys off the Cumbrian Coast between July and August this year. The report, commissioned by Radiation Free Lakeland, calls for these plans to be postponed, claiming the impact assessment by NWS is “deeply inadequate” and “lacking in appropriate scientific and academic rigour”. According to a freedom of information request, a licence of exemption to carry out these surveys was given to NWS for ‘scientific research’. But Radiation Free Lakeland says the survey is not for ‘scientific research’ but a plan to dispose of nuclear waste. “We commissioned an independent report because we need to counter the PR spin from the nuclear waste industry who are calling the seismic testing ‘non-invasive scientific research,’” says Marianne Birkby, Founder of the campaign group. She argues that, rather than seismic blasting for scientific purposes, the plans facilitate a commercial venture for a “deep nuclear dump for heat generating nuclear waste.” A limited company that wants to enable ever more nuclear waste from new nuclear builds, Radioactive Waste Management, is behind it, Birkby claims. “Despite the marine protections this part of the Irish Sea has, it is an outrage that independent environmental impact assessments have not been carried out. Protections clearly mean nothing when the nuclear waste industry wants to pave the way to a deep nuclear dump.” In response to the claims, NWS says “there is no requirement to undertake a public consultation for these surveys.” “We have undertaken marine environment assessments requested by Natural England and navigational authorities to assess any impacts and they have been satisfied that our activities are exempt,” adds Chris Eldred, senior project manager for geosphere characterisation at Nuclear Waste Services. Marine radioactivity researcher and consultant Tim Deere-Jones is the author of Radiation Free Lakeland’s report. He says that NWS’s licence application for the seismic survey is characterised by “a marked lack of transparency.” It also shows a refusal to engage in consultations with the public and marine stakeholders such as fishermen. Deere-Jones claims they have carried out what is essentially a private in-house environmental impact assessment – with no independent oversight. “NWS has also ignored the comment from Professor Popper, a leading authority on fish bioacoustics.” Popper warns of a clear “information gap” that makes it impossible to reach a clear conclusion on the effect that these blasts could have on animal behaviour or health.

Euro News 22nd June 2022 read more »

A CUMBRIAN community is taking part in international discussions regarding the underground storage of nuclear waste. South Copeland GDF Community Partnership has formed to discuss with residents, the potential of hosting a GDF for the UK’s higher activity radioactive waste. The South Copeland Search Area includes the electoral wards of Millom, Black Combe & Scafell. And the South Copeland GDF Community Partnership has opened talks with international communities who have prior experience of the practice. The Mayor of Ignace in Canada, Penny Lucas, and the Chair of the Ignace Community Nuclear Liaison Committee (ICNLC), Brad Greaves, gave a presentation online to the South Copeland GDF Community Partnership on a selection of key topics and issues which had been requested by members. Ged McGrath, Chair of the South Copeland GDF Community Partnership, said: “We were pleased to be able to speak to representatives of the Ignace Community Nuclear Liaison Committee in Canada, to understand more about their siting process, the ways in which the local community has engaged, and the benefits the process has brought and a GDF will bring to the area if it is selected. “There is a lot that we can learn from Ignace and other communities who are considering the possibility of, or are developing a GDF, and I look forward to our Partnership continuing such conversations as we continue to engage with and understand the views of our community here in South Copeland.”

Carlisle News & Star 22nd June 2022 read more »

Residents have been assured they will have their voices heard on potential plans for a nuclear storage facility in their village. The plans have been put forward for Theddlethorpe village and would involve a surface facility around 1sq km where the waste would arrive and deep below ground where the waste is disposed of. The plans have been put forward by the Theddlethorpe Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) Nuclear Working Group. The group announced that residents’ voices living in the area will be heard on the plans in response to the opposing groups’ fears that they will be left out. The GDF also denied that members would be forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement. Fears have been expressed that the wording of the application process for a new Community Partnership has left out nearby residents by The Guardians Of the East Coast (GOTEC) and the Nuclear Free Local Authorities (NFLA). Ken Smith, chairman of GOTEC, said: “There is no guarantee that most of the members of that partnership are also members of the community affected by this project. Even representatives from the county and district councils could represent wards as far from the proposed site as possible.”

Lincolnshire Live 20th June 2022 read more »

MILLOM Coastguard Rescue has teamed up with the military after a bomb alert was called. The team was called by Belfast Coastguard at 6.15 am on Thursday who asked them to investigate a suspicious item found by a member of the public on the foreshore south of Seascale. The Belfast team gave their Millom counterparts the coordinates and they soon found the item and identified it as ordnance (a military weapon).

Whitehaven News 17th June 2022 read more »

Imagine being subjected to ear-shattering blasts every ten seconds, twenty four hours a day for four straight weeks? By any metric, that would qualify as the most appalling form of torture. But that is exactly what is about to be inflicted on whales, dolphins, seals and other marine creatures in the Irish Sea if a new wave of opposition cannot stop it. The Irish Sea is already the most radioactive sea in the world, in large part a result of decades of radioactive discharges from the Sellafield reprocessing facility on the Cumbrian shoreline. Now, Nuclear Waste Services (NWS) has contracted a company called Shearwater Geosciences to blast its undersea seismic airguns off the Cumbria coast this summer, calling it “scientific research”.

Beyond Nuclear 19th June 2022 read more »

Britain’s most dangerous building is finally to be made safe after engineers began removing nuclear waste from an ageing silo left over from the arms race of the Cold War. Sellafield, at the edge of the Lake District in Cumbria, has taken the first steps in a project described as the nuclear industry’s equivalent of putting a man on the moon. It has spent the past two decades searching for a solution to the seemingly intractable problem of cleaning up 10,000 cubic metres of radioactive sludge housed inside a concrete silo. Known as Magnox, the silo was built in the late 1950s to receive waste from Britain’s atomic weapons development programme, as well as its growing fleet of nuclear reactors. Today it holds roughly 80 per cent of all of Britain’s nuclear waste. For decades the waste has been dissolving into a highly dangerous and potentially explosive mix within a building no longer fit for purpose, leading to it being described as the “most hazardous building in western Europe” – a description Sellafield itself uses. In 2005 a leak containing 20 metric tons of uranium and 160kg of plutonium was discovered to have escaped from one of the containers. The Office for Nuclear Regulation, the public watchdog, has designated the building “an intolerable risk”. This week, the plant removed the first batch of waste from one of the silo’s 22 compartments using a robotic arm specially designed for the task. The radioactive material is then encased in cement, immobilising it to prevent any leakage, and placed inside a metal container designed to store it permanently. The project, which has been 20 years in the making and will take an estimated further 20 years to complete, costs roughly £2 billion a year. Phil Hallington, head of policy at Sellafield, described the project as the nuclear industry’s equivalent of putting a man on the moon.

Times 16th June 2022 read more »

Dounreay bosses are facing claims that worker morale has plummeted in the wake of a series of recent safety lapses at the plant. While accepting that lessons have been learned, they say the DSRL workforce is ‘pulling together’ and committed to addressing the shortcomings. Nuclear inspectors were on the site last week continuing their probe into the most serious incident, involving a leak of radioactive hydrogen from a waste plant where highly volatile sodium is stored. The incident, on April 20, has been classed as an ‘anomaly’ on the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES).

John O’Groat Journal 14th June 2022 read more »