Quote of the day 8th August 2014
"For those who object to a new nuclear repository I have one question - where do they think the stuff is now?"
(Jim King, local resident and Sellafield worker)
Jim put that to me shortly after showing a party of students from Manchester around Sellafield. One of the students said she opposed the idea of a new repository, saying that we shold not make any more waste. Jim pointed out to her that this was not mainly about new waste but finding the best and safest long-term storage place for the nuclear waste Britain already has, and she asked "where is it now?"
On being told that quite a lot of it was about two metres under her feet at that very moment, her perspective shifted somewhat ...
(Jim King, local resident and Sellafield worker)
Jim put that to me shortly after showing a party of students from Manchester around Sellafield. One of the students said she opposed the idea of a new repository, saying that we shold not make any more waste. Jim pointed out to her that this was not mainly about new waste but finding the best and safest long-term storage place for the nuclear waste Britain already has, and she asked "where is it now?"
On being told that quite a lot of it was about two metres under her feet at that very moment, her perspective shifted somewhat ...
Comments
The Geology is some of the least suitable in the country.
where should it go?
how do you get it there safely? policing the transport all the time?
why is it geologically unsuitable? having been mined for century's.
we are talking about a store thats almost twice as deep as the deepest of all pits, of course Haig, and then building a storage facility that would be similar to the above ground storage facility that currently exists.
The stuff is there now, its behind a couple of metres of shielding concrete, but it is there and above ground right now, so why not put a couple of metres of sheilding concrete and 2000 feet of eath in the way as well?
Jim's quote perfectly illustrates the total moral bankruptcy of some anti-nuclear campaigners who oppose any specific proposal to put the material in any given location, which ignores the fact that it does have to stay or go somewhere.
West Cumbria is a huge area, and although there may well be parts of it which are not geologically suitable - and that was the reason given by the then government for one particular site when dropping the Nynex proposal - the work has simply not been done to enable anyone to state with complete confidence either that there is a geologically suitable site or that there is.
My biggest problem with the campaign against the MRWS process was that the anti-nuclear lobby spoke as if this was already established when what they actually achieved was to kill the process just before it moved on to the investigation which would hopefully have established the facts.
Are you suggesting we waste further 100’s of millions of pounds of public money when it is already known that west Cumbria is not "a very highly suitable geological location"?
And even if they had, the fact that the site which for a variety of reasons they put forward was rejected partly on geological grounds would not prove that none of the other sites on any short list they may or may not have had would have failed.
Plus that exercise was two decades ago. We need to review the situation using modern technology.
Which is NOT an argument to ignore them if they are quoting solid evidence or asking that it be established - but IS an argument to ignore such views when they consist of assertion not backed up by evidence or, worse, is presented as a reason not to go for the evidence.
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