BNFL proposed building a rock laboratory to find out if their preferred site, near Gosforth in Cumbria, would be suitable for an underground nuclear waste store. Cumbria County Council refused planning permission. BNFL then appealed to the Environment Minister. Today (Monday) John Gummer announced that the Council was right to reject the proposal.
This means that BNFL will now be seriously looking for an alternative site to store all Britain’s nuclear waste for centuries to come. Their choice will probably be restricted to existing nuclear sites, and Dounreay is likely to be high on their list.
The people of Scotland now have to be increasingly vigilant, to ensure that Dounreay does not become the dumping ground for all Britain’s nuclear waste.
said Tony Southall, Joint Secretary, Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
One knock on effect of this announcement is that the hulks of nuclear submarines are likely to remain at Rosyth for the foreseeable future. The underground waste store in Cumbria would have taken the chopped up remains of submarine reactors, if it had been built. There is now no end in sight for Rosyth’s role as a nuclear graveyard.
The failure to find any solution to the problem of what to do with nuclear waste, has not stopped the government from going ahead with building more nuclear submarines. A £2 billion order for three nuclear powered submarines from VSEL is expected to be confirmed today (Monday). VSEL’s role in nuclear work probably helped the yard win another recent order at the expense of Kvaerner in Govan. Cumbria would appear to be getting the jobs and not the nuclear waste - perhaps in Scotland it will be the other way round. Scottish CND News