A total of 2,824 people have voiced their concerns online at the proposed plans – dubbed Europe’s largest nuclear project – to build another nuclear site in west Cumbria.
The £10bn plant at Moorside will be built next to the county’s existing nuclear plant Sellafield, should it get the go-ahead.
The plans have become a major talking point in the area with opponents highlighting environmental issues while supporters claim it could create up to 21,000 jobs.
Those behind the petition, Radiation Free Lakeland, say that building a new site would make the area more dangerous.
A statement on the petition website from the group said: “Cumbria already has Sellafield. The Sellafield site has the biggest amount of radioactivity on the planet. A major accident involving the liquid high level waste tanks would have catastrophic consequences and make the area uninhabitable for many generations.
“The area around the Sellafield site should be an untouchable buffer zone to provide a measure of safety for surrounding towns and villages, to accommodate the documented leakage of radiation from the Sellafield site into groundwater and to minimise the target area for terrorist attack, instead of doubling it.”
Opponents of the scheme are also critical of the consortium behind the plans, NuGen.
The consortium is part-owned by Japanese industrial giant Toshiba, who Radiation Free Lakeland claim were one of the suppliers to the Fukushima plant which suffered a meltdown in three of its six reactors in 2011.
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