Norman Nicholson Had it Right: Nuclear IS Hell in a Grain of Sand

This letter was published in the Whitehaven News on September 1st - it features a poem by Millom Poet, Norman Nicholson. A poem which was frequently taught in Cumbrian Schools before the fakery of "clean" "green" nuclear.

David Moore's fizzing enthusiasm for new nuclear "Nuclear is key to clean energy for the future" Whithaven News August 25th 2021 leaves a very nasty taste. The so called small modular reactors and fusion 'research' are the latest wheeze to try and keep the nuclear shebang going. They have all the same problems of waste, emissions and electricity too expensive to meter. As someone who lives within the 50km Outline Emergency Planning Zone for Sellafield as well as living within the 30km OEPZ for Heysham, the poem "Windscale" by Millom poet Norman Nicholson is especially prescient given that Sellafield and David Moore are also fizzingly in favour of the highly mechanised "state of the art" earthquake inducing coal mine five miles from Sellafield. What could go wrong? Ask Norman Nicholson.

Windscale by Norman Nicholson

The toadstool towers infest the shore:

Stink-horns that propagate and spore

Wherever the wind blows.

Scafell looks down from the bracken band

And sees hell in a grain of sand,

And feels the canker itch between his toes.

This is a land where the dirt is clean

And poison pasture, quick and green,

And storm sky, bright and bare;

Where sewers flow with milk, and meat

is carved up for the fire to eat,

And children suffocate in God's fresh air.

yours sincerely

Marianne Birkby

Radiation Free Lakeland