Nuclear waste: boreholes next?

PRESS RELEASE
Jan 14th 2013 no embargo

Campaigners from Friends of the Earth against West Cumbria 'volunteering' to host a nuclear dump say the Government is shifting the rules on what the County would be signing up for. The Department of Energy & Climate Change has agreed a pause with the 3 Cumbrian Councils over deciding whether they should volunteer to go forward with the search for a site in West Cumbria for deep geological disposal of nuclear waste. Decision day is 30th January 2012, when Cumbria County Council, Copeland Borough Council and Allerdale Borough Council will meet and decide. All 3 have to be in favour.

The process for making such decisions is set out in the White Paper Managing Radioactive Waste Safely, published in June 2008. But it has not been followed so far over Stages 1,2 and 3, and Baroness Verma of DECC has indicated it is going to be changed for Stages 4 and 5. So it is no longer clear what the decision about going forward to Stage 4 will actually involve. The budget for the NDA's work on this has been dramatically increased to £50 million. This is unlikely to cover just desk studies, and boreholes could be included. While Stage 4 was going to be restricted to 'desk studies' those in favour of going ahead could argue that this would be innocuous. But drilling boreholes is another matter altogether. And all the evidence collected by the MRWS Partnership [1] relates to going ahead on the basis of desk studies only.

Dr. Ruth Balogh, nuclear issues campaigner for W Cumbria & N Lakes FoE said:

'The government is shifting the rules. After the Councils decided to defer their decisions in October, Baroness Verma wrote to the 3 Councils [2] and to the Cumbrian Association of Local Councils (CALC) [3] and said she has 'concluded that the so-called 'desk studies' of the MRWS process needs a thorough examination' [3], and, over geology she would 'not rule out a change in the process set out in the 2008 MRWS White Paper' [2].

'So not only do we no longer know what we would be signing up for, but the consultation done by the MRWS Partnership is now invalid because it considered Stage 4 as being restricted to desk studies only. We are seeing here a real possibility of boreholes and associated major industrial works and infrastructure arriving soon in the most beautiful areas of West Cumbria. This flies in the face of the principle of volunteerism, and is an insult to West Cumbrians and their representatives.'

/end

1. MRWS Partnership Final Report August 2012 http://www.westcumbriamrws.org.uk/documents/306-The_Partnership's_Final_Report_August_2012.pdf
2. Letter from DECC to the leaders of Allerdale, Copeland and Cumbria Councils December 2012 http://www.westcumbriamrws.org.uk/documents/330-Letter_from_DECC_to_the_three_councils_(Allerdale_copy)_19_Dec_2012.pdf
3. Letter from DECC to Cumbria Association of Local Councils November 2012 http://www.westcumbriamrws.org.uk/documents/328-Letter_from_DECC_to_CALC_19_November_2012.pdf

Notes:
The MRWS process was initiated by government in June 2008 via a White Paper.
The West Cumbria MRWS Partnership was established after the 3 Councils made expressions of interest in volunteering, and deliberated fro 3 ½ years before reporting in August 2012.
Baroness Verma is the Minister responsible for nuclear waste in the Department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC).