The plaques read as follows:
'Dedicated to the children of Bedfordshire
Erected by B.A.N.D. members October 1986
Pilgrims Protest
Bedfordshire against nuclear dumping'
The monument has been left standing outside what once was the Elstow Storage Depot and now will become home to new houses. The depot was going to be used to bury nuclear waste but plans for this were dropped just before the 1987 general election. Water was discovered just 14 metres below the surface making it unsafe to bury the waste which Nirex wanted to do.
The following website describes this historic happening:
(
visit link)
'After the collapse of the UKAEA’s search for a HLW dump at the end of 1981, the Government decided instead to begin a search for dumpsites for low and intermediate-level waste (LLW and ILW), in the expectation that burying these wastes would be less controversial.
In 1982, the Government set up Nirex, the Nuclear Industry Radioactive Waste Executive, but only gave it responsibility to implement a strategy for the disposal of LLW and ILW.
Meanwhile in 1983 a resolution calling for a two-year moratorium on dumping nuclear waste at sea was agreed at the International treaty organisation - the London Dumping Convention. The Government had been planning to ignore this resolution, and continue with the annual dumping of low and intermediate level waste at sea, which had been going on since 1949. However, the National Union of Seafarers refused to carry out the dumping. Eventually, the London Dumping Convention made its moratorium a permanent ban, so an important route for the disposal of nuclear waste was denied to the industry.
Also in 1983 Nirex, announced a new policy: a deep anhydrite mine under Billingham in Cleveland was proposed as a site for ILW, and Elstow in Bedfordshire was proposed as a site for the shallow burial of LLW.
Opposition groups sprang up in both areas. The Billingham site was abandoned in January 1985, ostensibly because ICI, the mine’s owners, had refused access to the official survey team because of huge pressure from the local community.
Then in February 1986, three further sites joined Elstow on the short-list for a LLW shallow burial site. Nirex announced it would like to investigate the four sites - Elstow in Bedfordshire, Bradwell in Essex, Fulbeck in Lincolnshire and South Killingholme on Humberside – to see if they were suitable for the construction of a facility for the disposal by shallow burial of LLW.
To avoid embarrassing public inquiries, Special Development Orders were granted in Parliament to permit survey engineers to gain access to the site. Three new opposition groups joined campaigners in Bedfordshire. When test drilling was due to start at three of the sites in August 1986, hundreds of people formed human barricades and successfully prevented contractors from gaining access for three weeks. History repeated itself at the fourth site in September. Contractors only gained access to the sites by use of court injunctions and a heavy police presence.
On 1st May 1987, prior to a General Election, the Government abandoned the four proposed LLW sites. It was decided instead to develop deep disposal options for ILW and “piggy-back” LLW in the same facility.'