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Energy: Radioactive Waste Management

My Lords, this partnership with host communities was the pipedream of Nirex, which tried to impose the repository on West Cumbria, where I live. It was a disastrous proposition which met universal hostility in the local community. From this we should learn a clear lesson: it is highly unlikely that anyone will volunteer. I might change the phrase from nimby to wimby—““Welcome in my back yard””—but this will not be welcome in anyone’s back yard. Is not the real answer the one that people simply refuse to examine, which we concluded at the time was the solution; that is, to have an international settlement or site somewhere in the world where everyone sends their nuclear waste. That is the long-term solution that will survive a century; it is not for every nation state to somehow deal with the matter in a local way which offends local communities.