Published at 12:42, Tuesday, 22 September 2009

LAST week Germany’s nuclear waste storage site, which has so far cost nearly $2 billion, was pronounced ‘dead’ by the Environment Minister, and he was backed by the Federal Office for Radiation Protection.

German newspapers had been reporting that the conservative government of the 1970s, led by Chancellor Kohl, had altered a scientists’ report that came to the conclusion that the location in Lower Saxony was not suitable for long-term storage of nuclear waste, so that Gorleben could indeed be chosen.

Back to 1973, when the search for a permanent storage site began, the government identified three promising sites.

Gorleben was not among them, but it was a sparsely populated, under-developed area bordering former East Germany that the state wanted to boost economically.
Now, as then, the conservative leader of the German government,
Angela Merkel, wants to continue pursuing Gorleben, despite its proven unsuitability, at least in part because most of the alternative candidates are located in states dominated by party colleagues.

All this must sound familiar to anyone who has followed the nuclear waste debate in West Cumbria, stretching right back to the 70s and the “Four Sites Saga” and continuing today with the Government wanting, because of political expediency, to use a site which we know to be unsuitable.

The Americans have given up on Yucca Mountain, the Germans are having to give up on Gorleben.

How long will our Government try to buy West Cumbria, before they too have to admit that it is an unsuitable site?

JILL PERRY
Copeland Prospective Parliamentary Candidate
Green Party

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