By Alan Irving

Published at 15:53, Wednesday, 08 April 2009

A BUSINESSMAN has discovered that his busy holiday caravan park sits on the edge of the proposed site for a nuclear reactor in the hamlet of Braystones.

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But Tom Milburn, who runs the Tarnside Caravan Park, told The Whitehaven News this week he was not shocked. “I will just have to wait and see what happens next,” he said.

RWE, the German-based power company, has secured an option to buy the 180-acre farmland site and has nominated it to the government as a potential new nuclear reactor site.

Strong opposition from residents in the Braystones and Beckermet area has been voiced but Tom Milburn has mixed feeling about the controversial proposal.

Mr Milburn, who also runs caravan parks at Gosforth and St Bees, said this week: “Copeland is very keen on tourism and nuclear is very important to the economy of the area, no question about that.

“It all depends on whether tourism and nuclear can co-exist in the future – I don’t think we can stop nuclear development in the area, wherever it proves to be, but the question for me is can tourism live with it?

“I believe tourism has a good future in West Cumbria and my hope is that any nuclear reactors won’t put people off from living here.

“Tarnside actually looks right into Sellafield and it only seems to have bothered a couple of people who have stayed here.

“Our area has suffered from a lot of bad publicity over Sellafield but that was in the past but we haven’t had any of those leaks and scares for a few years, so long may it continue.”

Mr Milburn added: “Any concerns I had were expressed at the public meeting in Whitehaven but I am resigned to the fact that nuclear new-build will happen in some form or other.”

Residents in the areas of Braystones and Kirksanton near Millom – where RWE may wish to build another reactor – have both voiced their opposition saying that nuclear development is best kept at Sellafield where 400 acres of agricultural land has been nominated by the NDA.

The government will decide later in the year whether to include all three sites on a draft list for public consultation.

Sellafield staff union representative Joe Clark (Prospect) said any new Sellafield reactors should be built on an existing brownfield – the AGR (golf ball) Windscale site.

At the Sites Stakeholder Group meeting in public at Whitehaven he asked the NDA to consider decommissioning the AGR at a quicker rate and be replaced by a new power station rather than use 400 acres of greenfield surrounding the present Sellafield site. We should look at the option of accelerating the AGR’s decommissioning rather than destroy all this farmland,” he declared.

But the NDA’s programme director at Sellafield Ian Hudson said funding was directed at reducing Sellafield’s higher hazard areas in order to reduce risk. There was also a question of timing.

Former BNFL reactor bosses have previously identified the AGR site as ideal for new reactors.

Published by http://www.whitehaven-news.co.uk