Trust's nuclear power stance welcomed by Lakes campaigners (From The Westmorland Gazette)

Trust's nuclear power stance welcomed by Lakes campaigners

9:52am Thursday 11th March 2010 in

• Skip social links
• Print
• Email
• Comments(0)

ANTI-NUCLEAR campaigners in the Lake District have welcomed the National Trust’s formal opposition to plans for a new generation of reactors in west Cumbria.

Radiation Free Lakeland said it ‘wholly agreed’ with the trust’s view that the Government’s national nuclear policy statement was ‘not fit for purpose’.

The National Trust, a significant landowner in the Lake District National Park, said it had serious reservations about building a new power station at Sellafield and that plans for nuclear plans at Braystones and Kirkstanton should be scrapped.

Marianne Birkby of Radiation Free Lakeland said: “The trust’s statement is to be welcomed but we would go further and insist that nowhere in Cumbria is suitable for new build, especially not Sellafield, which houses the world’s most dangerous high level waste tanks. Efforts should be concentrated on looking after these.”

In its statement, the National Trust said building a nuclear power plant at Kirksanton would harm an area of national and international ecological importance while a power station at Braystones would ‘impose large structures’, blighting the seascape views from the Lake District National Park.