Copeland MP Jamie Reed has come under fire for his insistence that the Sellafield Mox plant is vital to west Cumbria.

He had said in Parliament last week - “My constituents, this industry and our country cannot do without the services that the Sellafield MoX Plant provides”.

But that has stung anti-nuclear campaigners into a response, and a flurry of letters have gone out to newspapers across the county and the UK.

Marianne Birkby, for Radiation Free Lakeland, said: “When the former nuclear spin doctor claims that continued and increased reprocessing will bring ‘massive benefits to the taxpayer and my constituents, and the opportunity to earn billions of pounds for the UK’ just think of the opposite and you will have something nearer the truth.

“America banned reprocessing in 1979 as being too dangerous and too expensive.   The only private commercial reprocessing facility in the United  States, West Valley in New York, resulted in radioactive waste that is still  threatening the Great Lakes watershed more than 30 years later and will cost American taxpayers billions to clean up.

“There is no magic formula here  in Cumbria – it is just as dangerous, substituting intermediate level wastes for high level wastes ie ever more nasty waste streams which all need to be managed ad infinitum at the taxpayers expense. 

“Reprocessing is claimed by Jamie Reed to be the saviour of climate change.  This is also a nasty myth.  Reprocessing releases greenhouse gases much more powerful than carbon dioxide – such as the ozone-depleting chloro- and hydro-fluorocarbons as well as sulphur hexafluoride. 

“Don’t let the confidence tricksters turn Cumbria into a nuclear sacrifice zone.”

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