Climate campaigners have welcomed Angela Rayner’s decision to stop a new deep coal mine being opened in Whitehaven, Cumbria. There’s more to this story. The Chief Executive Officer of West Cumbria Mining Ltd is Mark Kirkbride. His second job is on the Radioactive Waste Management Committee advising the Government how to deal with the massive stockpile of radioactive waste from our nuclear power stations. Mark’s answer: dig a huge hole, 25 square km, under the Irish Sea, and bury it.In the industry’s parlance this is called a Geological Disposal Facility (GDF). Mark would’ve liked the coal pit next to the nuclear waste dump.

When asked by a newspaper what the biggest challenges for Cumbria are, Mark answered: “Diversification in terms of employment … and try to change the way people perceive the whole nuclear legacy and industry – it has been and is a massive bonus for West Cumbria and should not be considered to be ‘a problem’.”

I disagree with him. The Sellafield nuclear disposal facility mainly deals with nuclear waste decommissioning and storage. Campaigners from Radiation Free Lakeland commissioned a report on pollution in Whitehaven harbour. Funded by private donations, here are some of the findings: We knew that there would be uranium and radon in the silt in the harbour as a result of the acid mine pollution gushing into the harbour from old and deep mines but in the silt in Whitehaven harbour is a highly radioactive element called Americium 241 - this can only have come from the nuclear industry- how it got there- via the Irish Sea from Sellafield discharges or via the decades of nuclear waste transports - or both - remains to be tested.

Radiation Free Lakeland’s top campaigner, known as Marianne Wildart, laid the groundwork for the coalmine decision by asking for a judicial review. I’ve been in contact with Marianne for some years now. She’s a truly inspiring woman who never gives up. Her lawyer, Leigh Day, said after the decision: “This is Great News – now we just need to stop the CEO of West Cumbria Mining’s other much more dangerous project – a deep nuclear dump for high level nuclear wastes!”

A GDF needs stable geology which off the Cumbrian coast it isn’t. Undeterred, the proponents carried out seismic testing. Not so long ago a stretch of this Cumbrian coastline was designated a Marine Conservation Zone. But unfathomably, no environmental assessment was carried out. Mark Kirkbride’s organisation said it wasn’t needed. The seismic testing delivered blasts every 5 seconds, 24 hours a day, for 20 days. Local people found lots of dead harbour porpoises, seals and jellyfish.

The Irish Sea is home to a diverse number of species, hence Special Areas of Conservation off the coast of Wales too. Pollution won’t stay near Cumbria. Seismic testing affects species over a very wide area. Nuclear waste cannot be wished away. That’s why we need some honesty from Labour, Tories, Lib Dems and Plaid who all argue that nuclear power is vital to get us out of the climate emergency hole.What they really want to promise us is that we can carry on consuming electricity in even greater quantities and that nuclear power is clean. They mean that it produces no carbon dioxide as a by-product of the reaction process, but they fail to tell you how much carbon dioxide is emitted in the construction of the power station, the transport and the decommissioning. And none of them want to answer my question as to how they will deal with the waste. Do they support the big nuclear dump under the Irish Sea?

Answers here please!