West Cumbria not ruled out as nuclear waste dump

In a week that saw the European Commission approve underground burial as a way to dispose of high-level nuclear waste, Defra published a geological report on the suitability of West Cumbria for this kind of geological disposal.

The study looks at the Copeland and Allerdale areas, where Allerdale, Copeland and Cumbria County Councils have set up the West Cumbria Managing Radioactive Waste Safely (MRWS) Partnership to ensure that people living in the area are involved in making an informed decision about whether or not to proceed with a facility siting process.

This area is the only one in the country to have come forward as a candidate for taking nuclear waste.

The study's conclusions are ambiguous, not ruling out the suitability of the area, but advocating further investigation. It rules out parts of the West of Cumbria, but raises the possibility that part of the Lake District could be a potential store.

This was condemned by local activists against the dump. Senior energy campaigner Ben Ayliffe said the report meant “almost anywhere” in the Lake District could become a dump for the UK’s radioactive waste.

The MRWS Partnership said they needed more detailed investigations before there could be any “real idea" of where the site could be located, if anywhere.

Minister of State for Energy Charles Hendry said: “We must progress implementation of geological disposal, the long-term sustainable solution for dealing with radioactive waste.

“The report, commissioned from the British Geological Survey, is a step forward. The geological disposal facility site selection process is based on voluntarism and partnership and these results do not present any reason why West Cumbria cannot continue to consider whether or not to participate in that process.”

The exclusion criteria, defined by two independent groups of experts, mainly examine whether there is any risk of the security of the dump being compromised in the future by anyone seeking to extract resources or the need to protect the quality of exploitable groundwater.

If the Partnership chose to proceed further, increasingly detailed geological and other criteria assessment would have to be undertaken.


Keekle Head, a 70 hectare former opencast coal mine near Whitehaven, Cumbria, which Endecom, a company owned by SITA UK, has bought to use for the disposal of low and very low level radioactive construction and demolition waste.