Published at 16:07, Wednesday, 24 September 2008

COPELAND MP Jamie Reed has suggested a referendum over Copeland’s willingness to house the UK's nuclear waste repository.

Mr Reed told this week’s Labour Party Conference, in Manchester: “Nobody should assume a deep-storage repository for nuclear waste will be housed in Copeland.”

Copeland MP Jamie Reed said his community “may or may not” want to house the waste and if they did not want it he would not be putting the area forward.

His remarks come after Copeland council in July of this year made a formal expression of interest in hosting the repository.

Speaking to conference delegates Mr Reed said: “It would be folly to say it will be literally in my back yard by default. It has to be done by public support, a referendum of local people whether they want it if needed, when the schedule of benefits has been given.”

And he dismissed claims from people who see any benefit package as a “bribe”.

Last year environment minister Lord Rooker urged councils to bid to provide the site for a deep-storage repository for nuclear waste.

Copeland Council chiefs expressed an interest in talking with Government but made no commitments.

And earlier this month Allerdale Council said it would make an “expression of interest” in hosting an underground repository to store radioactive material, but only if the community agrees to it.

Mr Reed said: “If my constituents are prepared to meet the criteria and want it, and safety is the first and last issue, then we are looking at billions and billions of pounds.”

He joked: “If anyone from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is here bear that sum in mind. That is not an unrealistic sum in my view.”

The Labour MP hit out at the “scandal” of previous governments for failing to address the nuclear issue.

He said politicians had not had the guts to deal with the issue as Labour was doing.

Mr Reed told a fringe meeting it was vital because the facilities where it is held at Sellafield were only temporary measures.

He said: “The longer we leave it the more it will cost the taxpayer.”

The Committee on Radioactive Waste Management estimates by 2120 there will be 477,000 cubic metres of waste – five times the capacity of the Albert Hall.

Most would be intermediate or low level.

Copeland currently houses 99 per cent of the UK's low level waste; 75 per cent of intermediate waste, and all its high level waste.

WEST Cumbria Friends of the Earth will be out in Keswick on Saturday from 10am collecting signatures on their petition to the County, Allerdale and Copeland councils asking them not to volunteer to host a nuclear waste dump.

Published by http://www.whitehavennews.co.uk