‘It’s a bribe’: the coastal areas that could become the UK’s nuclear dump

theguardian.com:

On the unspoilt Lincolnshire coast, where dog walkers enjoy the five miles of golden sandy beach and families take holidays in the caravan parks beyond the dunes, the efforts of British politicians to persuade the public nuclear energy is green, safe and clean do not seem to be gaining traction.

A skull glowers down from the sand dunes on to Mablethorpe Beach, a portent of death and destruction, and a throwback to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament protests of the 1980s.

It is here, in a 24-hectare (60-acre) disused gas terminal bordering the beach, that Boris Johnson’s big bet on nuclear energy is being tested. Experts on nuclear waste have said that until the UK builds a large underground nuclear waste dump or geological deposit facility (GDF) to safely store the 700,000 cubic metres of radioactive waste from the country’s 20th-century nuclear programme, no new nuclear plants should be created.

It is a problem that has dogged the development of nuclear energy not only in the UK, but across Europe and in the US: how to safely and permanently store the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle. The solution of a GDF was put forward nearly 50 years ago, but the UK is no nearer to putting spades into the ground, and the cost of decommissioning and disposing of the country’s radioactive waste has risen to £131bn.

When the prime minister recently promised eight new nuclear plants in as many years, the problem of the highly radioactive waste they would add to the stockpile was not mentioned.

It is, however, something very much at the forefrontof the minds of those living in the remote Lincolnshire village of Theddlethorpe and the neighbouring town of Mablethorpe.

Residents learned the seaside resort could become home to a vast nuclear