Campaigners protested over nuclear waste disposal facility plans at a drop-in event.
A new campaign has launched by the Radiation Free Lakeland group – Lakes Against Nuclear Dump (LAND) – and supporters held a peaceful demonstration on Friday.
Environmental activists picketed at a Mid-Copeland Community Partnership drop-in event which was designed to discuss the potential to host a geological disposal facility with residents of the area.
They are concerned that 16 research boreholes have been drilled at the Low Level Waste Repository in Drigg and claim there has been no democratic oversight.
A spokesman said: “A map released under Freedom of Information request as well as showing recently acquired long lease of the Drigg dunes shows the mining/mineral rights owned by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and clearly shows a linked route from the LLWR area to the inshore area of the Irish Sea.
“The mining and mineral rights mean that the NDA are able to extract rock without reference to anyone else.”
A spokesman for Nuclear Waste Services said the drilling at Drigg was separate to the search for a site for a geological disposal facilty.
They added: “NDA’s strategy, which was subject to consultation, makes a commitment to explore the technical feasibility of near surface disposal as an option for managing some of the UK’s radioactive waste.
“There are many potential treatment and disposal routes for different types of radioactive waste and this study is separate from ongoing activities to find a suitable site for a GDF.
“Any future decisions about whether and where to construct a near-surface disposal facility would be subject to both a government consultation on policy and the usual town and country planning processes that also provide opportunity for statutory and public consultation.”
