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Sellafield’s massive water abstraction plan for its new construction work has no environmental impact assessment and inadequate monitoring

Sellafield blithely apply to the Environment Agency for new water abstraction and in the same application admit that they have already contaminated the freshwater aquifer beneath them

Lakes against Nuclear Dump and NFLA , Marianne Birkby, May 07, 2025

Campaigners concerned that Sellafield’s water abstraction plan has no environmental impact assessment and inadequate monitoring

In a recent response to an Environment Agency consultation on a application by Sellafield Limited to extract water to support construction work at the site, campaigners at Lakes against the Nuclear Dump [LAND], a campaign of Radiation Free Lakeland, and the UK/Ireland Nuclear Free Local Authorities have expressed concerns that no environmental impact assessment has been carried out and that plans to monitor contamination in discharges are inadequate.

Sellafield plans to extract an additional 350,000 cubic metres of water a year from the Lake District to support the construction of new facility to repackage radioactive waste, whilst proposing to discharge almost a million litres of contaminated water every day into the River Calder and out into the sea. This for an indefinite and uncertain period.

LAND and the NFLAs are concerned that this will be done without an Environmental Impact Assessment being carried out and with no proper plans in place to monitor the discharged water, adding to fears that the work will lead to yet more radioactive contamination in the already fragile local environment.

Sellafield may believe that the discharges are safe and within legal limits, but the two campaign groups do not subscribe to the view that there is a safe limit when it comes to radiation and in recent years there have been large research studies demonstrating the cumulative effects of low-level, but legal, radiation on human health.

May 8, 2025 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, UK