The Committee on Radioactive Waste Management, who boast the CEO of the Cumbrian Coal Mine as their "expert advisor" on digging the big hole, have described the above ground 'facilities' as " The surface footprint of a GDF site would be modest, at around 1 square kilometre (~247 acres)." They go on to say: "Current land purchase costs for rural greenfield and brownfield land are in the range of £30,000 to £70,000 per acre in the areas of the UK currently being considered for host communities. Therefore, a likely purchase cost would be in the order of tens of millions. As such, land purchase is not considered to be
a substantial cost element." (money is no object to this nefarious plan - it is public money after all)
This got me thinking - what does 1km square look like? Well, it is just a bit less than the area of Hyde Park which is 1.4 km square. I doubt any Londoner would describe Hyde Park as "modest."
So where could the "modest" 1km square surface facilities for a deep nuclear dump actually go on the Lake District coastal fringe? The National Park is ruled out so that leaves limited space to fit in a 1km square area which would be less Hyde Park and more Mordor.
From the surface facilities the plan is to tunnel out to the subsea area into a vast mine many times the size of the esteemed Committee on Radioactive Waste Management advisor's coal mine.
Estimates for the size of the deep nuclear dump aka geological disposal facility vary - from 10 to over 20 km square. Knowing the penchant of the nuclear industry to substantially increase their initial stated footprint I have included the larger estimate of 26km in this graphic.
As you can see the pretence of the two areas of South and Mid Copeland is absolutely irrelevant. Even if there was an area of solid granite under the Irish Sea bed, the act of mining out such a mass void would fracture and undermine the integrity of the surrounding sub-sea geology. Not to mention making Sellafield vulnerable to mining induced earthquakes.
Then I got to thinking about Nuclear Waste Services removing Allerdale from the running for a deep nuclear dump. They said that this was because the geology wasn't suitable -well thats true of all the areas - there is no geology suitable to contain heat generating nuclear wastes into eternity. Looking at the maps the reason for pulling Allerdale out of the running was more prosaic in that the nuclear dump could not be squeezed into the available area of the Solway and its surrounds? Wherever the plan, the whole of the Lake District fringe , the Lake District and immediate and European neighbours would be impacted. Divide and rule tactics are irrelevant when it comes to an earthquake inducing mine next to Sellafield we are all impacted.
There is an excellent talk now available online "Atomic Wastes Under Cumbria?" with Dr Ian Fairlie an expert on radioactivity in the environment and Richard Outram from the Nuclear Free Local Authorities .....
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