CONSULTATION over whether a nuclear waste repository should be built on Cumbria’s west coast comes to a close tomorrow with opponents making their voices heard in many imaginative ways.

Canvasses depicting radio-active waste have been painted, talks have been given at the top of Scafell Pike and people have dressed in white boiler suits to highlight the dangers of buried nuclear waste.

The opposition to the Govern-ment’s proposals were promp-ted by concerns over the consultation process and the lack of knowledge about nuclear waste.

Anti-nuclear activists Save Our Lake District are staging Rock Solid? Expo — a collection of artworks by Cumbrian artists exploring the plan to build a repository in the county. The exhibition at Kendal Museum was launched with a walk up the 978-metre-high Scafell, which the group claims is smaller than the proposed mine that would be filled with radioactive waste.

Marianne Birkby said the group wanted to educate Cumbrians about the proposals which she claimed will be a ‘travesty of democracy.’ And more than 20 people took to the streets of Ambleside dressed in white chemical overalls and handed out hundreds of leaflets about the proposal.

Student Miranda Gardner, 24, who headed the campaign, said: “We hoped to highlight the urgent need for as many people as possible to save Cumbria from nuclear dumping, and make their voices heard.”

And this week South Lakeland District Council has said in a letter to the West Cumbria Managing Radioactive Waste Safely Partnership (MRWS) that there are ‘fundamental flaws’ in the procedures of the consultation process.

Anti-repository groups have also raised concerns about building a ‘dump’ in a geological area.

They claim mines were abandoned because of high rainfall and permeable rocks.

The MRWS has said a facility will only be built if it is safe. But there are claims that important scientific information is being ignored.