Australian Government propaganda promoting nuclear waste dump to a rural community
Another pack of 15 glossy brochures arrived in our mail last week. Only one was new, all the rest were sent last year.
• How many people actually read them all cover to cover last year?
• How many just had a quick flick through, looked at a few photos and read a few lines?
• What did people do with the first lot?
• What happens with this lot – stack them on the bookshelf next to the others?
Those who support the dump don’t need to read them because they don’t need any more convincing.
Those who don’t support the dump don’t need to read them again because nothing has changed. The site was geologically and culturally unsuitable last year. That hasn’t changed.
So why send all this stuff again? Is it good use of tax payers’ money when the whole of the east coast is burning and the country is in the grip of potentially the worst drought in recorded history?
What do these brochures cost to compile, print and produce, in colour and on highest quality paper?
Imagine the benefit to our region if all these publishing resources had been directed at promoting our magnificent Flinders Ranges? Of course, a campaign like that would cost millions!
This dump has been a con job from the start and no one knows where the finish line is – the judge makes the rules!
Matt Canavan and ANSTO lying to Kimba community about true level of planned nuclear waste
Susan Craig Fight To Stop Nuclear Waste Dump In Flinders Ranges SA
Visual Storyteller 9 Nov 19
Resources Minister Matt Canavan refers to Intermediate Level Waste as “medial waste.” This is a lie. How can communities make informed decisions based on misinformation? (Extract from The Advertiser November 8. Page 5) Zac Eagle The reprocessed, vitrified waste returned from Europe is classified High Level in every country except Australia. Kazzi Jai Honestly, if it is so safe, safe, safe…..then why are they treking it over 1500 kms plus away from Lucas Heights which produces over 90% of Australias nuclear waste? And the determination of the best place for this waste is by an individual nominating their own land? For an all-above-ground dump? The cheapest way to deal with all of this waste! Not the best….but the cheapest! This is how desperate the Feds are to rid themselves of this waste! Not the most scientific and geological stable site, not the least flood prone or least earthquake prone site…..but by a landowner nomination….. And then dividing a small rural community – whether Kimba or Hawker – and feeding them half -truths and bribing these little struggling communities with bribe money into accepting this waste which remains dangerous for hundreds of years, and the compulsory tag-a-long intermediate level waste for thousands of years! And saying that it is an industry! When is radioactive landfill for Lucas Heights an industry? It is simply a licence for Lucas Heights to generate as much waste as they like, and have no responsibility for it, since it is shafted over onto South Australia and becomes SOLELY South Australia’s liability and problem! Disgraceful! Anton Thony since when is medical waste intermediate level waste? https://www.facebook.com/groups/941313402573199/ |
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Fuel tanker fire on highway near Kimba – just as well it wasn’t a nuclear waste transport
Emergency services responded to reports a fuel tanker rolled and caught alight on the Eyre Highway at Kelly, about 15 kilometres east of Kimba just after 7am on Thursday 31 October.
Fortunately, the tanker driver was not injured in the crash.
The fire caused damage to the road surface and required repairs by Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure.
The highway is open, but speeds are currently restricted to 40 km/h at the scene of yesterday’s fire.
Even if you don’t live in Kimba – HAVE YOUR SAY on proposed nuclear waste dump

A reminder to clinicians – nuclear medicine has radiation dangers
Clinicians Get Real on Radiation: ‘Don’t Do Dumb Things’
Awareness of surroundings and others in the room are key to proper cath-lab radiation safety, a VIVA “roundtable” concluded. TCTMD, By L.A. McKeown
November 07, 2019 S VEGAS, NV—Keeping cath lab staff as well as patients safe and within acceptable levels of radiation is a priority that operators can and should be doing on a daily basis, experts here agreed.
The most crucial message for clinicians is that “they are primarily responsible not only for their own personal safety and the patient’s safety, but of everyone in the room,” Mark Bates, MD, DSc (West Virginia University School of Medicine, Morgantown), told TCTMD. He co-moderated a roundtable at VIVA 2019 on radiation protection strategies that provided a glimpse of how the future might look.
“I think 10 years from now we’re going to be in a position where a lot of procedures in the vasculature are going to be done with minimal radiation exposure as we optimize the existing technology, as well as some of the new laser- or light-augmented three-dimensional imaging,” he added…….
he encouraged operators to be aware of their trainees and monitor them for excess radiation exposure.
“As experienced interventionists, we see anatomy that we know is going to be a challenge,” he explained, “[but] we watch our trainees move through the algorithm and change to different wires and different catheters much slower than what we’re used to doing because they need to learn how to do it. Not only are they taking on radiation, but the patients are taking on a lot of extra radiation, too. I think we need to control the time that we allow trainees to perform certain aspects of the procedure.”……
Communication, Visualization, and Behavior Change
Gray noted that while you may have adequate shielding in your cath lab, it won’t help if you don’t use it correctly. A side drape, for example, that gets in your way and is pushed aside out of annoyance may make a difference in exposure levels for everyone in the room.
“That’s really the dumbest thing you could do, so don’t do dumb things,” he said. Gray added that understanding the effects of scatter on yourself may be a simple as looking at your hands for loss of hair on the fingers and wrists. At his institution Geiger counters are used when X-ray badges indicate elevated radiation exposures for individual operators. “So, you have an auditory signal that’s telling you that you’re on the pedal,” he said, adding that it may help in situations where staff are reaching over the table and may not even realize they are being exposed…….. https://www.tctmd.com/news/clinicians-get-real-radiation-dont-do-dumb-things
Radiation risk to South Australians from nuclear waste transport and dumping
Susan Craig Fight To Stop Nuclear Waste Dump In Flinders Ranges SA, 9 Nov 19, I live less than 300km from KIMBA and less than 400km from HAWKER in metropolitan Adelaide as the wind blows. In the event of the nuclear incident, which there will be, I and my family will be effected. This is catastrophic for all South Australians. Radioactive contamination blows with the wind and flows with the water, there will be no barrier or magic force field to stop it. https://www.facebook.com/groups/941313402573199/
Nations ignore global heating, at their peril
Ignoring Climate Catastrophes, Counter Punch, by ROBERT HUNZIKER NOVEMBER 8, 2019, The planet is coming apart at the seams right before the eyes of scientists at work in remote fringe areas of the North where permafrost crumbles and collapses. It’s abrupt climate change at work in real time, but the governing leaders of the world either don’t care or don’t know. If they did, there would already be a worldwide Climate Marshall Plan to save civilization from early warning signals of utter chaos.“Across 9 million square miles at the top of the planet, climate change is writing a new chapter. Arctic permafrost isn’t thawing gradually, as scientists once predicted. Geologically speaking, it’s thawing almost overnight.” (Source: Arctic Permafrost Is Thawing Fast. That Affects Us All, National Geographic, September 2019 Issue)
After all, collapsing permafrost is the leading edge of cataclysmal global warming as it precedes additional catastrophes that follow one after another, and then another. All of which happen unannounced, known as abrupt climate change events. The modern world’s First Near-Catastrophe, the Ozone Hole (1980s), was luckily avoided 40 years ago, more on this fascinating story later. It was the planet’s closest brush with nearly total extinction ever since the Permian-Triassic event took down 95% of all life 252 million years ago. Meanwhile, the concern is whether cascading permafrost will end up as the world’s Second Near-Catastrophe, meaning it gets attended to, or will it lead to something much worse, as in “catastrophes that follow one after another, and then another?” Cherskiy, Russia, which is home to the Northeast Science Station at 69°N, far above the Arctic Circle, is a year-round base for an international research station that studies Arctic biology and climate change. It is 60 miles inland from the East Siberian Sea (another high risk area in the Arctic). In January of 2018 something unheard of happened at Cherskiy. The topsoil that has maintained frozen permafrost for eons was not refreezing like it had every year for as long as records were kept. Whereas, January in Siberia is normally so brutally cold that human breath can freeze with a “tinkling sound” that locals refer to as “the whisper of stars.” “Three years ago, the temperature in the ground above our permafrost was minus 3 degrees Celsius (-27 degrees Fahrenheit),’ Sergey Zimov (an ecologist) said, ‘Then it was minus 2. Then it was minus one. This year, the temperature was plus 2 degrees,” Ibid. The aforementioned example of abrupt climate change in Siberia is a beckoning out of the North, warning that the past 10,000 years of the Holocene era, earmarked by a Goldilocks Wonder World “not too hot, not too cold,” has ended, as excessive heat tears apart regions of the planet, piece by piece. Thereby sounding the alarm and threatening comfy lifestyles in every country in existence today, but is it a warning signal with a short fuse or a long fuse? Human-generated greenhouse gases have kicked nature into high gear, competing with humanity by emitting tons of methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, even in the winter in Siberia above the Arctic Circle. It’s earth-shattering news that should cause sleepless nights for world leaders, but it doesn’t alarm them. Otherwise, they’d already be taking emergency measures. They’re not! As it happens, world leadership is sacrificing their constituencies on the altar of fossil fuel profits and a brand of capitalism that recklessly consumes everything in site. Therefore emphasizing consequences such as, Alaska’s North Slope has seen temperatures spike 11°F in 30 years as temperatures hit 90°F 240 miles above the Arctic Circle, challenging Florida’s balmy weather. As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change struggles to keep up with ever-faster climate change disaster scenarios that unfold right under their noses, the world’s leadership looks like a herd of deer frozen in headlights. Meanwhile, the risks of excessive global warming, or heat, is not properly understood by the public in the following ‘double-scary’ context:……. https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/11/08/ignoring-climate-catastrophes/?fbclid=IwAR2yyAMaH3W5EXqznrms5qWqG_Uku5YkE0ij8Qu93HvTnMZ6jyS2lff9CsE |
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Australia’s out of control bushfires (all along the region where the nuclear lobby wants to put reactors!)

Australian firefighters warned they were in “uncharted territory” as they struggled to contain dozens of out-of-control bushfires across the east of the country on Friday.
Around a hundred blazes pockmarked the New South Wales and Queensland countryside, around 19 of them dangerous and uncontained.
“We have never seen this many fires concurrently at emergency warning level,” New South Wales Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons told the ABC. “We are in uncharted territory.”The RFS said on Friday afternoon it received multiple reports of people being trapped in their homes at several locations.
Homes have also been destroyed, the RFS added.
A mayor on New South Wales’ mid-north coast said on Friday the bushfires ripping through the region were “horrifying and horrendous beasts”.
MidCoast Council mayor David West said a fire near Forster threatened a council building on Thursday night.
“It was literally a wall of yellow, horrible, beastly, tormenting flames,” the mayor said.
The mayor was particularly concerned about an out-of-control fire burning near Hillville south of Taree.
Hardly “broad support” as 40% of Kimba locals reject nuclear waste dump
More than 60 per cent of Kimba locals support nuclear waste dump in their region https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-07/majority-of-kimba-residents-support-nuclear-waste-facility/11680774
By Casey Briggs A clear majority of Kimba residents have voted in favour of a nuclear waste dump being built in their region.
Key points
Federal Resources Minister Matthew Canavan has released the results of a month-long indicative postal ballot, confirming 61.6 per cent of the 734 ballot papers were in favour of the dump. The non-binding ballot — which was conducted by the Australian Electoral Commission — was a key factor in the Federal Government’s decision on where to build the facility, but native titleholders have challenged the validity of the process. Two sites near Kimba, halfway between Australia’s east and west coast, were shortlisted as possible locations for the country’s first national nuclear waste facility. A third site in Hawker, near the Flinders Ranges, was also shortlisted, and a vote of that town’s residents will begin next week. The proposal would see the Kimba site storing Australia’s low- to medium-level radioactive waste, which is currently housed at more than 100 sites, including the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor in Sydney. The Federal Government said it would pay up to four times the value of the property on which it chooses to build the facility. Mr Canavan said the result showed a “clear level of support” for the proposal.
But No Radioactive Waste on Agricultural Land in Kimba or SA Committee spokeswoman Kellie Hunt said the result showed the community was still divided. “Minister Canavan has always promised that the National Radioactive Waste Facility would not be sited where broad community support did not exist, and with nearly 40 per cent of residents saying no, this clearly cannot be proven in Kimba,” she said. She said the Government had wasted “unacceptable amounts of time, money and recourses attempting to coerce our community into accepting this facility”. “The stress his flawed and divisive process has caused is clearly evident in our once-cohesive town,” she said. ![]() Landowner Jeff Baldock volunteered his property as a potential location for the facility.”This is a way that we can hopefully get a new industry into town that doesn’t rely on rainfall,” he said. Kimba resident Audrey Lienert is opposed to the nuclear dump, and said the issue had divided the town.
“The 45 people they talk about coming to work here, they’re not going to buy the houses, they’re only going to be working to dig the holes.” On the other side of the debate, Kerri Cliff said the benefits to the community were “obvious”. “Whichever side people are sitting on, I think the vote has been something we’ve wanted all along,” she said. “Whether it gets us the actual facility, we’ll have to wait and see.” Native titleholders run separate ballotOnly local residents were permitted to vote in the ballot, infuriating the region’s native titleholders, the Barngarla people. The Barngarla people lost a court battle to stop the vote, but vowed to appeal to the Federal Court. “The decision will also affect all of Barngarla’s rights over their native title land whether they are for or against it,” a spokesperson for the Barngarla Determination Aboriginal Corporation said in a statement. The Barngarla people said they had also run their own vote through an independent company, and wanted the results included in the official vote.
“This means, that if the total number of people in the Kimba and BDAC ballots vote no, then we will seek to enforce this result legally.” |
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In Wyoming, lawmakers objecting to just a pittance for storing nuclear wastes
Lawmakers right to hold off on nuclear waste bill https://www.powelltribune.com/stories/lawmakers-right-to-hold-off-on-nuclear-waste-bill,22189, November 7, 2019 , By CJ Baker
Offer people enough money and they’ll put up with quite a bit.
So if the State of Wyoming was offered, say, billions of dollars a year, you might find some folks willing to hold their nose and let the federal government store a bit of nuclear waste in an isolated corner of the state.
But with the feds apparently offering relative peanuts to stash their waste in Wyoming, we’re pleased that state lawmakers are backing off the idea.
On Tuesday, the Legislature’s Joint Minerals, Business & Economic Development Committee decided not to sponsor a bill that would have called on the governor’s office to try negotiating a nuclear waste deal with the feds.
Lawmakers started exploring the idea of temporarily storing spent nuclear fuel rods back in July. Things got off on the wrong foot right away, as the Joint Management Council opted to look into the concept using an unannounced vote held by email; the discussion only became public when WyoFile, a nonprofit news service, learned of and wrote about it.
We wrote in this space back in July that, while the lack of transparency was frustrating, the idea was worth exploring. However, the price has to be right. State Sen. Jim Anderson, a Republican from Casper, told WyoFile in July that Wyoming could receive as much as $1 billion a year for storing the country’s nuclear waste. That could go a long way toward relieving some of Wyoming’s budget woes.
But when the Spent Fuel Rods Subcommittee actually heard testimony on the subject in September, federal officials suggested the state might only receive $10 million a year — and a chunk of that would go to local governments, according to reporting by the Casper Star-Tribune.
Further, it was suggested that Wyoming might have a fight on its hands to even get that funding, possibly needing Congress to pass legislation and potentially facing multiple lawsuits.
On top of that, the idea drew nearly unanimous opposition from dozens of members of the public who weighed in at the meeting and via online comments.
“Keep that crap out of my state,” was one representative remark from a Casper resident.
While we believe that nuclear waste could be safely transported to and stored in Wyoming, it’s almost certain that, regardless of whatever precautions are taken and assurances given, many residents will remain wary and fearful of the idea. That means accepting spent fuel rods at a new facility here would require ramrodding legislation through the Wyoming Legislature and Congress over the top of some staunch opposition.
There’s also little question that the move would create some bad PR for Wyoming — the “toxic waste dump” jokes basically write themselves — which is a concern for a state that relies on tourism.
All of that is to say that we were a bit dumbfounded to hear that going to all that trouble would net a mere pittance in revenue.
In an interview with the Casper Star-Tribune last month, Sen. Anderson acknowledged the U.S. Department of Energy hasn’t offered enough cash.
“… if they stick to that $10 million figure, we’re not even going to pursue it,” he said.
However, Anderson suggested to the Star-Tribune that the state could
Nuclear for Newcastle? But the Hunter’s renewable energy programme is underway
The Australia Institute told the inquiry that the main problem with nuclear power is its high cost. It asserts that renewables, demand management and storage can meet Australian energy needs safely…….
In its submission to the inquiry, the People for Nuclear Disarmament said: “Nuclear technology – both nuclear weapons and nuclear reactor technology – tries to do the impossible, to assure perfection where perfection is notoriously unavailable”. …..
In Tamil Nadu, Rooftop Solar could outdo Kudankalam nuclear power plant
In Tamil Nadu, Rooftop Solar Has the Potential to Outdo Nuclear Power https://thewire.in/energy/tamil-nadu-rooftop-solar-nuclear-power Poonkuzhali 8 Nov 19, Tamil Nadu has said its vision is to have an installed solar powergeneration capacity of 9,000 MW by 2023. In September, India and Russia announced joint plans to set up 20 nuclear power units in the former over the next two decades. India’s nuclear establishment believes that the use of nuclear energy can only be good for the country’s industrial development and prosperity. However, nuclear isn’t the only mode of power generation that can make such a claim. Tamil Nadu is the only state in the country with two nuclear power plants: at Kalpakkam and Kudankulam. The Kalpakkam complex, commissioned by 1986, has four operating units. Two of them are of 235 MW capacity and two of 600 MW capacity. The complex’s gross generation in 2017-2018 was 1,194 MU (at 64% availability; in 2015-2016, with an availability of 97%, it generated 1,861 MU). The Kudankulam power plant is the single largest nuclear power station in India. It has two operational units of 932 MW (net) each. In 2018-2019, with an availability of 33%, it generated 2,797 MU. Tamil Nadu isn’t the sole beneficiary of the power generated by these plants. In 2016, it required 100,319 MU. It received 99,691 MU from various sources, including state, central and private, and renewable and non-renewable. Of this, nuclear power plants supplied 4,999 MU. As it turns out, it’s possible to generate this 4,999 MU from rooftop solar panels alone. On March 31, 2017, Tamil Nadu had the highest installed capacity of grid-connected renewable power (10,562.39 MW), followed by a distant Maharashtra (7,647.60 MW), thanks to wind energy. According to a 2014 book by S. Gandhi, former president of the Electrical Engineers’ Association of the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board, a 1-MW panel in Tamil Nadu produces 1.5 MU per year on average. This conversion accounts for various factors, including that power production happens only during the day and that production efficiency varies according to the season. Extrapolating from the book, to produce 4,999 MU, Tamil Nadu needs an installed capacity of 3,333 MW. A 1-kW solar panel over 1,000 roofs can produce 1 MW, so to produce 3,333 MW, we need to install 1-kW solar panels over 3,333,000 roofs. A 1-kW rooftop panel requires about 100 sq. ft. According to state data, there are 2,392,457 buildings in town panchayats alone. Including the total area of all rooftops in Tamil Nadu’s urban centres, and assuming all roofs will generate 10 W/sq. ft., solar power should be easily able to provide the requisite 3,333 MW. The Government of India and various state governments have consistently presented nuclear power as a safe, sustainable and preferable alternative to coal power. However, while nuclear power plants have very low carbon emissions and have historically caused the fewest fatalities, these advantages are substantially offset by the cost of disposing radioactive waste and an opaque administrative setup in India that has often disprivileged marginalised communities living around power generation complexes. On the other hand, the biggest downsides of solar power generation are that solar panels lower the productivity of the land they’re setup on, and the batteries used to store power contain toxic materials whose extraction and processing has harmed people in other, often poorer, countries. But both issues are quickly resolved in the current example. The question of land productivity doesn’t apply since the panels are to be installed on rooftops. Second, in its solar energy policy published in February 2019, the Tamil Nadu government declared it now has the technology to support grid-connected solar panels on a large scale. This means even domestic solar panels can be connected to the grid, obviating the need for power storage batteries. According to its policy, the state government says its vision is to have an installed solar power generation capacity of 9,000 MW by 2023. As of today, the Tamil Nadu government requires every new building erected in the state to be equipped with a rainwater harvesting system. If lawmakers issue a similar mandate vis-à-vis solar panels, at least for apartment complexes and non-residential buildings, Tamil Nadu could soon be self-sufficient about its energy needs, if not produce a surplus it can sell to its neighbours. Poonkuzhali is a writer and activist based in Chennai. |
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Farmers fight against nuclear industry plan to take groundwater
West Valley farmers fight APS attempt to take water for nuclear , RoseLawGroup Reporter, plant https://roselawgroupreporter.com/2019/11/west-valley-farmers-fight-aps-attempt-to-take-water-for-nuclear-plant/ Posted by Staff / November 6, 2019 By Ryan Randazzo | Arizona Republic Arizona Public Service Co. has applied to pump “poor-quality” groundwater from the West Valley that the company says Buckeye farmers are wasting. But the farmers say the water is neither poor nor wasted.
APS wants to take some of the high-saline water from underground and test whether it is cost effective to use at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station about 50 miles west of Phoenix.
Unlike most nuclear facilities that use river or seawater to cool the reactors, Palo Verde uses treated effluent water.
Right now, it gets all of its water from the 91st Avenue Wastewater Treatment Plant. But the cost of that treated effluent water is going to increase over time, so the plant is seeking alternatives.
“If we don’t get some kind of innovative approach to water, 20 or 30 years down the road, the costs would just be prohibitive,” said Jack Cadogan, senior vice president of site operations at Palo Verde for APS. “We’ve always known we would be looking for innovative, cost-effective solutions for water.”…….
Global heating brings radioactive threat from Pentagon’s secret nuclear city
CAMP CENTURY: CLIMATE AND ICE MONITORING
Next Chernobyl? Frozen nuclear city to ‘seep radiation into environment’ as ice melts
A FROZEN underground city could be threatening to seep radioactive materials into the environment as climate change forces the ice to melt. Express UK By CALLUM HOARE Nov 8, 2019
Project Icework was a top secret United States Army programme of the Cold War, aimed at building a network of mobile nuclear missile launch sites below the Greenland ice sheet due to its strategic location near the Soviet Union. To study the feasibility of working under the ice, a highly publicised “cover” project, known as Camp Century, was launched in 1960, but six years later it was cancelled due to unstable conditions. The nuclear reactor was removed before the site was abandoned, but hundreds of tonnes of toxic waste remain buried beneath the ice.
Now, climate change is threatening to expose it, as the ice melts at an alarming rate.
YouTube channel Seeker spoke to William Colgan, who is currently running The Camp Century Climate Monitoring Programme, in the hope of preventing the radioactive material from reaching the surface.
He said in 2018: “The people working at Camp Century did not have an understanding of climate change. “They didn’t have solid records, global climate models, these big data sets so you can see an overview of what’s happening to Earth’s climate.
The moving ice sheet started to destabilise the underground tunnels, prompting the US Army to abort Project Iceworm.
“When Camp Century was decommissioned, only the nuclear reactor was taken out for destructive testing, and the rest of the camp was left in place, and they closed the doors.
“It was abandoned on the assumption that climate wouldn’t change, and it would continue to snow at Camp Century forever and the perpetual snowfall would entomb all of the base infrastructures and eventually bury it.”
The narrator of the series explained why Dr Colgan is so invested in the project.
He said: “The climate has changed and temperatures have reached record highs in the Arctic and Greenland’s ice sheet is melting at an unprecedented rate, which could turn Camp Century’s abandoned waste into a major environmental risk.
So a team of scientists, including William, went back to the site.”
Dr Colgan explained what his team is doing.
He added: “In 2017, the government of Denmark, at the request of the government of Greenland, started the Camp Century Climate Monitoring Programme.
“We set up a bunch of instruments that are erected on the ice sheet surface and then we drill in and we put probes into the ice sheet.
“It keeps a real-time data stream coming from the Camp Century site where we monitor a bunch of things, mainly the temperature of the snow, the temperature of the ice and the air temperature…….https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1201199/nuclear-warning-cold-war-camp-century-project-iceworm-radiation-climate-change-spt
Copeland Council remove “Support” for deep geological dumping of nuclear waste —
Continuous Miner Machine – for making very big holes in the ground for example deep under the Irish Sea or Ennerdale or the Solway – Cumbria County Council have voted to bring this infrastructure to Cumbria when they said yes to West Cumbria Mining. Spot the difference? The Whitehaven News has reported that […]
via Copeland Council remove “Support” for deep geological dumping of nuclear waste —