By Victoria Brenan

Last updated at 09:43, Saturday, 16 June 2012

An all-day meeting will be held near Keswick about controversial plans to create an underground nuclear dump in west Cumbria.

Hot topic: Allerdale Council leader Alan Smith answers questions at February’s waste repository meeting in Cockermouth

The meeting, on June 25, is being organised by the West Cumbria Managing Radioactive Waste Safely Partnership.

The partnership of Allerdale and Copeland councils with Cumbria County Council has already expressed an interest in siting a nuclear repository in West Cumbria. 

It is seeking the views of local residents before considering whether to pursue the plan any further.

Keswick town council last month voted not to back the proposal, having originally supported it but was swayed by an outcry from local residents.

Last month, a telephone survey carried out by MORI on behalf of the partnership said 51 per cent of people in the Allerdale area supported taking part in the search for a suitable site for an underground disposal facility.

But the survey was dismissed by environmental groups, who said the local Lakeland geology was not suitable for an underground nuclear dump and that the potential risk of nuclear gases escaping, plus the damaging publicity to the Lake District’s tourism industry, far outweighed the creation of new jobs.

A spokeswoman for Radiation Free Lakeland, said: “Around 75 per cent of Cumbrian parish and town councils who have already voted have said no to going any further along the toxic steps.

“Yet it is striking how this democratic vote is being ignored and unreported while the telephone poll is trumpeted in the national press.”

The next stage of public consultation involves the meeting at Braithwaite Memorial Hall from 9.30am to 4pm. Admission is free.

Representatives of all three partnership councils are expected to attend. 

Details of the agenda are due to be published nearer the date of the meeting.

Members of the public are invited to attend as observers and they will be given the chance to ask questions.

Anyone planning to attend is asked to contact catherine.little@copeland.gov.uk or phone 0800 048 8912.

The results of the consultation will be included in a final report which will go to the three partnership councils for a formal decision later this year.

First published at 08:59, Saturday, 16 June 2012
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk