In an extract of a letter sent to Cumbrian press today and previewed exclusively here, Professor Smythe says:

"Just stand with your back to the sea, anywhere on the coastal plain, looking inland at the mountains of the national park. Imagine the rain falling on these mountains, percolating – however slowly and imperceptibly – through fissures and cracks in these slates and lavas, down towards the sea, over centuries and aeons. These same Lake District rocks are found below your feet, under the sedimentary layers of the coastal plain, constituting what we call geologically the ‘basement’. But the very large hydraulic head of underground water near the coast, thanks to the height of the mountains inland, means that some of this water can percolate back upwards to the surface on its progress to the sea. It is this natural flow pattern that rules out the coastal region from ever being a candidate site; it does not conform to internationally agreed standards for such a repository. In the long term, nature cannot be defied by engineering".

So, West Cumbria has already been proven, with £400M of the best scientific evidence, to be completely unsuitable for a deep nuclear dump.

But this is the 'wrong' answer for a government which wants to press ahead with dangerous new nuclear build and needs somewhere 'soft and willing' to dump the waste.

Hence the Managing Radioactive Wastes Safely Partnership with its remit to "look at geological disposal" Radiation Free Lakeland have formally opposed geological disposal and the MRWS Partnership invitation to join in the "discussions" paving the way to permanent blight for Cumbria....

Oppose geological disposal - All the compensation in the world is not enough.....