Wainwright and the Coal Mine

Wainwright’s “Atomic Carbuncle” and the new Coal Mine. The CEO of West Cumbria Mining has been appointed to the govnt body tasked with “delivery of a geological disposal facility”. Copeland wants the new coal mine and the GDF. So does the government – they have made this obvious by their appointment of at least two West Cumbria Mining appointments to Radioactive Waste Management. This is COLLUSION. #KeepCumbrianCoalintheHole and #NuclearWaste out!

Keep Cumbrian Coal in the Hole

https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/no-new-coal-mine-in-cumbria

This is the latest comment on an article in the Times about Wainwright and his famous Coast to Coast walk.

“I wonder what Wainwright would have made of the plan to install a massive new noisy coal yard and rail track at the start of this walk? The plan to open the first deep coal mine in the UK in decades under the sea at the beautiful St Bees Heritage Coastline is a national scandal that has gone weirdly under the radar. Not least the radar of the conservation bodies who should be up in arms about this. Instead it was nuclear safety campaigners who first raised the alarm – and continue to do so. This mine would extend to 5 miles from Sellafield, which houses the worlds biggest concentration of radioactivity. The nuclear connections don’t stop there. The CEO of the developers West Cumbria Mining has been appointed…

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Cumbria and the Coal Mine

Interesting and timely article in this months iconic Cumbria magazine..

Keep Cumbrian Coal in the Hole

Many thanks to the iconic Cumbria magazine and writer Fiona Campbell for the interesting and timely article in this months issue.

The article outlines some of the history surrounding the ongoing battle to stop the coal mine and questions the shortsightedness of shoehorning such a dirty industry directly back into West Cumbria. Whitehaven and the St Bees coastline is only just recovering from the massive industrial blight of Marchon (which was known for producing soap but was actually the largest single site producer of sulphuric acid in Europe – necessary to the reprocessing of nuclear spent fuel ) and the old Whitehaven Coal Industry. There is still much left to recover from!

But will this heart stoppingly beautiful coastline ever be given the time and space to recover some of its health and integrity?

Speaking to friends in Whitehaven this week they say that there are more tourists staying in…

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“Clean Energy” (used to be called “Nuclear”) Sells off Old Magnox Monitors – Used to Weld Radioactive Pipes?

Auction Rooms throw up some weird and interesting items. But one of the most bizarre in recent years must be the sale of this "Ex Nuclear Plant Reactor Control/ Monitoring System" in the Ramco Auction. I was intrigued as to where this had come from and wondered if it was an actual thing or some …

Intimacy Between WCM and the “Need” for a Geological Disposal Facility (to facilitate new nuclear build there needs to be a ‘solution’ to the waste- this is it)

Keep Cumbrian Coal in the Hole

Sellafield to Ennerdale – Ennerdale Granite is one of the areas in the frame for a GDF? WCM executives are in this nuclear dumping game as well as in the coal game.  (google map)

What with obsessing about “need for coking coal for steel” and emissions of carbon and methane from the proposed coal mine,  I totally missed this appointment back in November 2019.  Along with, it seems, the press and everyone else.

I wonder if the councillors would have been as keen to offer unanimous approval to embed West Cumbria Mining into the fabric of Cumbria had they been thinking about the intimate connections between WCM and the grandson of NIREX  – RWM.

Radioactive Waste Management is the government quango (previously NIREX, then MRWS) tasked with delivery of the plan for the Geological Disposal Facility for heat generating nuclear wastes.

We already knew that Steve Reece the former Operations…

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Do YOU think YOU should Fund Small Modular Nuclear Reactors?

The Engineer asks... "Do you welcome the government’s investment in AMR ("Advanced Modular Reactor") technology? Do you think  small scale nuclear is a distraction from critical large scale projects? Or perhaps you think that nuclear shouldn’t be part of our future energy mix at all. Have your say in our poll below." NO! I don't …

How much do you know about the connections between nuclear weapons and nuclear power?

Why is the UK government so addicted to nuclear?Nuclear weapons and nuclear power share several common features. In fact, the UK’s first nuclear power stations were built primarily to provide fissile material for nuclear weapons during the Cold War. The development of both the nuclear weapons and nuclear power industries is mutually beneficial. And now …

Stop Moorside – Again

Against Moorside - letter in the Whitehaven News from Radiation Free Lakeland Dear Editor Back in 2014 Radiation Free Lakeland said "Stop Moorside".  Well we did!  Now it appears we have to do it all over again  STOP MOORSIDE- 2014 The Nuclear Industry is SUPER KEEN to promote itself as Clean Energy.  It is being supported …

Update on Legal Case: Toxic, Toxic Culture at Sellafield

Support Alison McDermott on the 7th July.... Readers may remember Sellafield workers speaking out "about their experience of bullying and sexism at the Sellafield plant....after whistleblower Alison McDermott launched a crowdfunding page to pay for legal fees for her whistleblowing and victimisation case lodged to the Employment Tribunal against Sellafield Ltd. Alison told the local …

the sea cannot be depleted

Many thanks to Wallace Heim for being part of our Postcards from Cumbria expo. This is so poignant and so worth taking the time to listen to ..click on the link to listen to ‘the sea cannot be depleted ‘ The tides of the Solway Firth are among the most turbulent around this island, a fast sweep from the Irish Sea into the soft sands of the rivers Esk, Eden and Nith. A line across the blank blue of a map etches the division between Scotland and England. The middle of that sea is not a place where humans can live, but we can find sanctuary in the unfolding of life in the tidal muds and in the migrations of the human imagination across the sea surface. The Latin word vastus described the immensity of the sea, its emptiness and its waste.

Postcards From Cumbria

We are delighted to be able to include this thought provoking and poignant work by Wallace Heim.

“the sea cannot be depleted” can be listened to here

Writer and Producer, Wallace Heim describes the project …….

An estuary is continual turbulence. The tidal forces of the open sea move hard against the higher regions of land, the regions from where maps are made. Those maps mark the two lands, split by the tides and softened by the imperative of rivers as they run to the sea. Maps can chart a channel, a changing sandbank, a buried ship, a danger zone. But they cannot show the restless pull of sea and wind. Or mark the intimacies between the life of the sea and the life of the land.

The tides of the Solway Firth are among the most turbulent around this island, a fast sweep from the Irish Sea into the…

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NEW CALL IN REQUEST FROM KEEP CUMBRIAN COAL IN THE HOLE TO THE SECRETARY OF STATE.

New Call In Request of Coal Mine…….The Sellafield and Moorside site are at “high risk” of liquefaction (as outlined in a 2018 report by Geologists https://pygs.lyellcollection.org/content/62/2/116/tab-figures-data ) -this would be exacerbated by coal mine induced seismic impacts.

Keep Cumbrian Coal in the Hole

Campaign group, Keep Cumbrian Coal in the Hole has sent in a Call In request to the Secretary of State Robert Jenrick MP.

The World Wide Fund for Nature have already sent in a call in request to the Secretary of State.  KCCH say they agree with the points WWF make but have advised the Secretary of State of ” further overwhelming reasons for this development to be called in”

These reasons include:

1. West Cumbria Mining are asking for conditions to be relaxed in order to facilitate the addition of lower quality middlings coal to the development

( previously middlings coal was to be a “by product” of this “premium” coal mine ).

2. West Cumbria Mining propose mitigating against subsidence by backfilling 25% of the mined area  with cement paste ( the below land area and also close to the Marine Conservation Zone).  However 75% of the proposed void…

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