British Geological Survey identifies Lake District as the part of Cumbria most suitable for underground nuclear waste disposal
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It is not clear what Wordsworth would have made of it, but the 'bliss and solitude' of the Lake District that inspired the poet's verse has now made it the UK's leading contender for the long-term disposal of nuclear waste.
A report prepared for the government by the British Geological Survey (BGS) looked at the geological suitability of areas within Cumbria. The report will not in itself determine where a long-term nuclear dump will be sited, but it rules out much of the county outside the Lake District National Park as being unsuitable geologically.
Finding a safe disposal method for the UK's nuclear waste has been a thorny issue for several decades. In 2006, the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management published recommendations on long-term disposal, saying it would be best carried out by identifying suitable sites for burial.
The idea behind 'deep geological disposal' is to store radioactive waste from nuclear power stations and military establishments within suitable rock formations so that it remains safe for thousands of years. The UK government is pursuing this strategy and similar geological disposal plans are being made in Finland, Sweden and the US.
In 2008, the government called for communities interested in hosting such geological storage facilities to come forward for further evaluations. So far three local authorities in Cumbria – Allerdale Borough Council, Copeland Borough Council and Cumbria County Council – have shown an interest. To rule out unsuitable locations, the BGS was asked to examine the known geological features of the areas.
Cumbria already hosts the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant.
Areas with natural resources such as coal or iron ores at depths greater than 100 metres were screened out, as were places with exploitable groundwater resources in aquifers, because of the risk of radioactive contamination. On this basis the BGS ruled that areas in north-west and south-west Cumbria were unsuitable.
The BGS report is only the start of the process of choosing suitable sites. 'This work does not show where a facility might eventually be located,' the authors write. 'It is at an early stage in the site selection process and simply intends to avoid unnecessary work in areas which are clearly unsuitable for obvious geological reasons. A more rigorous assessment, based on a comprehensive range of criteria, will only be undertaken if a 'decision to participate' in further stages of site selection process is taken.'
Energy minister Charles Hendry said: 'We must progress implementation of geological disposal, the long-term sustainable solution for dealing with radioactive waste.'
He added: '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.'
Ben Ayliffe, senior energy campaigner at Greenpeace, said: 'It's hard to imagine a more tragic legacy to Britain's nuclear folly than vats of lethal nuclear waste being stored around Keswick or Scafell Pike ... Dumping this stuff underground is no solution anyway – wherever it is. So we certainly shouldn't be creating any more nuclear waste. There are much better ways of producing electricity.'
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