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Image: The George Monbiot Nuclear Greenwash Award to Cumberland Council. The background to the image is one of the ‘Areas of Focus” Gosforth, Cumbria.
Dear Cumberland Councillors,
We would like to congratulate you on winning the George Monbiot Award.
As you may know the famous journalist George Monbiot is a great convert to nuclear and this award in his name is in recognition of the Council’s ongoing unconditional support for the geological disposal plan for nuclear wastes. Confident in the benefits of this plan, the full council have never needed to debate or vote on continuing in partnership with Nuclear Waste Services in their delivery of the largest infrastructure project ever in the UK
Of course the award is a spoof but it is highlighting a very serious issue.
The press release is below and we encourage Councillors to at the very least lobby for a full debate and a full vote before continuing in plans for an experimental mine (much larger than the proposed coal mine) with groundworks leading to the sub-sea area in which to abandon very hot nuclear waste on and under the Lake District coast.
yours sincerely
Marianne Birkby
Radiation Free Lakeland
PRESS RELEASE 9th October 2025
CUMBERLAND COUNCIL GIVEN GEORGE MONBIOT NUCLEAR GREENWASH AWARD
Nuclear safety campaigners at Radiation Free Lakeland and Close Capenhurst are giving a spoof award to Cumberland Council. Cumberland are aiming to receive “Significant Additional Investment” from Government in return for saying yes to a nuclear dump. The “George Monbiot Award for Nuclear Greenwashing” is named after the Guardian columnist who declared his “love” for nuclear power following the earthquake caused Fukushima nuclear disaster of 2011.
Campaigners point to the underplaying of the disastrous ongoing impacts of nuclear catastrophes and have chosen the 68th anniversary of the worst UK disaster at Sellafield previously known as Windscale on which to make the award. Campaigners say that the ongoing blight caused by Sellafield should mean that the area receives “Significant Additional Investment” without this being tied to rolling over and saying yes to ever more nuclear blight.
High level wastes from the time of the Windscale Fire of 1957 are still at the Sellafield site along with 140 tonnes of plutonium all of which is now earmarked for deep burial under the Irish Sea bed.
Cumberland Council represents the only area in the UK to be “in partnership” with Nuclear Waste Services’ entirely experimental plan to bury high level nuclear wastes. No other country is proposing to bury 140 tonnes of plutonium and high level wastes under the seabed adjacent to Europe’s most hazardous nuclear waste site. Sellafield is still receiving nuclear wastes from reactors across the UK even though its existing radioactive waste burden is “intolerable.”
Cumberland Council are unique in denying all councillors a full debate and vote on whether or not to continue in partnership with Nuclear Waste Services in “delivery of a geological disposal facility.” Other areas of the UK who were volunteered as prospective sites such as South Holderness in Yorkshire and Theddlethorpe in Lincolnshire held full council debates and votes. The results were a resounding no to continuing with the experimental nuclear dump plan.
Cumberland Leader Mark Fryer, is far from neutral, having told campaigners he is supportive of a GDF and that the full council will only be allowed to debate and vote on the most important decision they will ever take, “when I say so.”
Thousands of people have already signed a petition urging Cumberland Council to hold a full debate and vote. The “Areas of Focus” for the enormous land based mine operations which will include spoil “bunds” able to be seen from space, are at Millom and Drigg (South Copeland Areas of Focus) and Gosforth and Seascale area (Mid-Copeland Areas of Focus). All of these areas are beautiful rural areas on the Lake District coast. Conveniently they are all just outside the National Park boundary.
The proposed land based mine operations would be active for over 100 years trundling plutonium and high level nuclear wastes down mine shafts to a 36km square void beneath the Irish Sea bed. Leading geologists Professors Stuart Haszeldine and David Smythe have cautioned against the burial of extremely hot nuclear wastes saying “It’s perfectly reasonable to think of a 150C-200C heat source at 0.5km, producing a geyser of boiling water intermittently erupting at surface temperatures above boiling.”
An increase in childhood leukaemia in Cumberland following the Windscale Fire and Sellafield operations has not (in the UK) been officially blamed on the massive release of radiation and ongoing routine discharges but on an unidentified “population mixing virus” allegedly caused by a massive influx of workers into a rural area such as would be required for enormous nuclear mineworks on the Lake District coast. Notwithstanding the “population mixing virus” theory, the nuclear industry run a “Compensation Scheme for Radiation Linked Diseases” for its workforce which includes diseases of the central nervous system and cancers
Campaigners are urging people sign the petition calling for Cumberland Council to hold a full debate and full vote before going any further in the “geological dlsposal” plan for very hot nuclear wastes .
Petition Urging Cumberland Council to allow full debate and vote
https://www.change.org/p/urgent-insist-cumberland-council-have-full-vote-on-nuclear-dump-plan
ENDS
More information and references
Windscale Fire On the 10 October 1957, detectors indicated there had been a radiation release in the reactor’s chimney (Pile one) at Windscale. The uranium was on fire, and had been for two days with fans inadvertently helping to fan the flames. As the BBC’s History Extra says “By the early hours of 11 October, more than 10 tons of uranium were ablaze, and temperatures reached 1,300 degrees Celsius (2372 degrees Fahrenheit).” Deputy works manager Tom Tuohy and several Windscale employees risked their lives to contain the fire during which radioactive material was released into the air and blown over Britain and Europe including polonium-210. https://www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/atomfall-real-nuclear-windscale-disaster-fire/
Bribery to say Yes to a Nuclear Dumo https://www.nuclearwasteservices.uk/disposal/geological-disposal/gdf-benefits/
Population Mixing Virus – the finger of blame? https://news.cancerresearchuk.org/2016/10/31/sellafield-radiation-and-childhood-cancer-shedding-light-on-cancer-clusters-near-nuclear-sites/
Compensation Scheme for Radiation Linked Diseases run by the nuclear industry for its workforce http://www.csrld.org.uk/index.php/q-a
Petition Urging Cumberland to allow full debate and vote
https://www.change.org/p/urgent-insist-cumberland-council-have-full-vote-on-nuclear-dump-plan
2025 George Monbiot Nuclear Greenwash Award – Sellafield’s funding of The Edge Water Sports Centre at Whitehaven https://nuclear-news.net/2024/10/12/1-b-sellafields-social-impact-multiplied-wins-greenwash-award-for-the-edge-water-sports-centre-in-contaminated-harbour/
Previous Awards
http://close-capenhurst.org.uk/?cat=46
George Monbiot “embraces” nuclear https://www.monbiot.com/2011/03/21/going-critical/
GDF is the most expedient but not the safest option https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/academic-agrees-with-nflas-position-on-management-of-deadly-rad-waste/
Lakes Against Nuclear Dump 
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