Is a Radioactive River Alive?
If a river is (or was) alive then the nuclear industry should be on its knees apologising to our most important and finite resource of rivers, lakes and aquifers instead of claiming to be “clean."
The oldest packhorse bridge in Cumbria with the Calder flowing below.
Sellafield “a ‘river’ runs through it” On reaching Sellafield the Calder has been straightened with “river banks” of concrete channelling the ‘once river’ and now radioactive sewer to the sea.
There have been some very good letters to the Guardian this week regarding the insanity of the government’s push for new nuclear build and new radioactive wastes. Here is an unpublished letter from yours truly following the expose on uranium dumped into the River Ribble from the birthing of the nuclear fuel chain…
Dear Editor
The same day award winning environmental reporter Pippa Neill’s expose “Revealed: three tonnes of uranium legally dumped in protected English estuary in nine years” (The Guardian 22nd May 2025), Radiation Free Lakeland received a judgement from the Advertising Standards Authority. This followed our complaint about an advertorial in the New Statesman from the government’s limited liability company Nuclear Waste Services.
The ASA decision is that the nuclear waste industry can continue to call itself “clean” and that the proposed dumping of hot (200 degrees c) nuclear waste under the seabed “ is a fundamental part of the UK’s commitment to tackling the climate crisis”.
So there you have it. Insanely hot and radioactive nuclear waste is not only “clean” but a “climate solution’ to boot. Radiation Free Lakeland have long been campaigning against the nuclear industry’s continued dumping of cocktails of radioactive substances into our rivers, sea, earth and air.
Preston is not alone in its radioactive river courtesy of decades of nuclear waste discharges from the front end of the industry. West Cumbria is home to some of the UK’s most stunning rivers and lakes.
The iconic Wastwater lake has been emptied many times over to cool the nuclear wastes held in ponds at Sellafield. These wastes would continue to heat up once dumped under the seabed as is recklessly proposed. Rivers have been irreversibly polluted by the front and back end of the nuclear hydra.
The river Calder is beautiful and begins on a Lakeland fell, running under picturesque packhorse bridges, once teeming with trout and freshwater pearl mussels. The last stretch of the river however runs through the gargantuan Sellafield site to the Irish Sea.
The river once meandering in large oxbows to the coast is now straightened. lined with sterile concrete walls and used as a radioactive sewer for Sellafield run off and discharges. If a river is (or was) alive then the nuclear industry should be on its knees apologising to our most important and finite resource of rivers and lakes instead of claiming it is the “solution to climate change” and “clean.”
There is a petition urging Cumberland council to take a vote before going further down the toxic path to subsea burial of viciously hot nuclear wastes.
yours sincerely,
Marianne Birkby
Radiation Free Lakeland