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Writer's picturewastwater1

Great British Nuclear Dump and the Good Ancestors



The Nuclear Industry loves hype and it doesn't get much more fizzing than "Great British Nuclear." This is a painting "inspired" by the promotional video of "Great British Nuclear" on Trudy Harrison MP's facebook page with Grant Shapps Secretary of State for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero . The video is very scary and even more creepy than the relentlessly upbeat and paternalistic old promotional films for the brave new Atomic age.


The "good ancestors" painted beneath the "Great British Nuclear Dump" banner refers to the nature writer Robert Macfarlane's essay on radioactive wastes in his book "Underland." Robert Macfarlane is also the writer of the popular book "The Lost Words - a Spell Book." A spell is certainly being cast on Cumbria (and Lincolnshire which is also in the running for a deep nuclear dump) with the use of the words "clean" and "green" in describing new nuclear and indeed Sellafield. Our descendants will not have the language they need to describe nuclear wastes. If nuclear wastes are clean and green how can they be toxic for eternity? So disappointing that a nature writer with full knowledge of the importance of words should a) take money from Sellafield for the "Deep Time" public art programme in what looks very much like the priming of Cumbria to accept a deep and very hot nuclear dump under the sea and b) describe the dumping of radioactive wastes in a deep underground cavern as an act to be carried out by 'good ancestors.' Macfarlane's essay on radioactive wastes in the book Underland makes no mention of the fact that the dump/s would also be for much hotter new wastes from new reactors. The ethics of shaming Cumbria into accepting a nuclear dump by insinuating that if they don't agree to a deep and very hot nuclear dump beneath the Lake District Coast and Irish Sea they will be "bad ancestors" is interesting.







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