A Message from MP for Sellafield (sorry Whitehaven and Workington) - the Nuclear Sprawl on the Lake District Coast “Not Large Enough, We Need New Nuclear and New Nuclear Dumps And I WILL DELIVER"

Josh MacAlister’s Fizzing Message for Atomic Cumbria is Below

My top priority as your MP for the last eleven months has been to unlock land at Moorside near Sellafield for new nuclear development.

I’m delighted to announce today that we have been successful.

This morning, the Prime Minister announced that 200+ acres of land at Moorside will be unlocked for clean energy development, including new nuclear.

I met with this Prime Minister this week ahead of his announcement to discuss my ambition for new nuclear in West Cumbria and our community's strong desire to be a host for new nuclear.

It has taken months of hard work to get to this point. The Cumberland Nuclear Future Board I set up last autumn with Cllr Mark Fryer, my fellow Cumberland MPs, the NDA, Sellafield Ltd and union and business representatives has played a key role in presenting a united front from West Cumbria in support of our role at the heart of the UK’s nuclear future. As has the strong community support here for new nuclear.

What will happen next is the NDA will go through a process to make the land available to a local development corporation which will then manage a market engagement process with nuclear and other clean energy developers to seek the best ideas for use of the land. I hope we will have some good proposals submitted by serious UK and international players.

I am absolutely clear on my view - Pioneer Park, as I like to call it, in honour of West Cumbria’s pioneering role in the civil nuclear industry, could and should be the place where we build a new nuclear power plant using small modular reactors and attract the energy intensive industry that could use this clean dependable power. This is crucial to grow and diversify our economy away from just nuclear decommissioning work and ensure that, just as we played a vital role in the UK’s nuclear past, we can play a role in its nuclear future too.

I want us now to get on with it quickly and I'm wasting no time. This afternoon, I asked the Energy Secretary to crack on with speeding up the regulatory process so we can build new nuclear faster.

While this doesn’t guarantee that we’ll get new nuclear in West Cumbria, it gives us the best possible chance we’ve had since the Tories let the NuGen deal collapse in 2018. Since then, we’ve been denied opportunity after opportunity under the previous government because of issues resolving the use of and access to land at Moorside.

Now that is dealt with, and with the Prime Minister’s backing and the backing of the whole government, we can seize control of our own destiny.

This really is a game changer for our area and I’d appreciate your help to ensure as many local people as possible see this news. Please like, comment on and share my post on Facebook, share my website, share the story in the Whitehaven News, forward this e-mail to your local contacts, and share any positive news stories you see this week far and wide.

I’m hosting a public meeting at 6pm on Thursday 26th June to officially launch my industrial plan for West Cumbria and talk through my vision for West Cumbria’s nuclear future.

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I hope you’ll share my excitement for this opportunity for West Cumbria. I’ll be sure to keep you updated as things progress.

Best wishes,

Josh MacAlister MP
Labour MP for Whitehaven & Workington