Funpark plan for nuclear site

NUCLEAR families will be welcome. A plan has been hatched to create a theme park with outdoor water slides and adventure courses on the site of one of Scotland's decommissioned atomic power stations.

Hunterston A, on a scenic stretch of the North Ayrshire coast, was shut down in 1990 with "defuelling" successfully completed five years later. Now a veteran councillor, supported by local tourism businesses, wants the area turned into a visitor attraction.

Documents submitted to the local council, which is considering future uses for the site, suggest Hunterston could become a flagship destination for all the family, with the nuclear plant envisaged as a key element.

Elizabeth McLardy, the councillor behind the venture, admits the facility appears an "unlikely bedfellow" for tourism, but argues in her pitch that it presents "an opportunity rather than a disruption of the overall visitor experience".

The vast building would become a "focal point" for the theme park, with displays and information boards informing tourists of the site's "industrial heritage". There would also be a bird sanctuary and an outdoor watersports park created on the Firth of Clyde coastline, including a Total Wipeout-style assault course.

However, the plan is facing opposition from the owners of the site - which wants to keep it strictly for industrial use - and environmentalists who claim that even Montgomery Burns, the profit-hungry boss of the nuclear power plant in The Simpsons cartoon, would not consider such a scheme at all "excellent".

McLardy, an independent North Ayrshire councillor, presented a motion and detailed development proposal during last week's meeting of the council's local development plan (LDP) committee, arguing that the planning designation for the defunct Hunterston site should be widened from its industrial-only status.

She argued that it offers a "golden opportunity" to help regenerate a region with some of the most deprived areas in the country which has lived for decades in the station's shadow. When the adjacent Hunterston B plant closes in 2016, there will be a major opportunity to attract massive grants to reclaim the whole peninsula for tourism, she said.

McLardy added: "There are large bits of land that have been lying derelict for well over 20 years. Rather than keep trying to flog a dead horse, why don't we look at something different?

"There's a golden opportunity here when Hunterston B closes because there will be major funding available from the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority," she said.

"It's an absolutely stunning area, the most beautiful place you've clapped eyes on.You've got Hunterston Castle and Portencross Castle there, so there are tourist attractions in place already, and you could link them all up."

The committee voted on including a tourism designation for the site in the local development plan last week with councillors deadlocked at 7-7. The chairman only voted against after considering representations from owner Clydeport, which wants to keep the site for industrial use.

In a letter on behalf of Clydeport, Tom McInally, a Glasgow-based planning and development consultant, ruled the tourism proposal to be "highly inappropriate", adding that Clydeport had received interest from companies to use the site as a power station or to manufacture wind turbines or service offshore rigs.

Undeterred, McLardy said that the LDP is only at the draft stage before being presented to the Scottish Government next year. "The LDP is going to come back out to the public for a final consultation before it is adopted by the council," she explained. "That's when I intend to launch a campaign to get people to make representations for my proposal."

However, she is also likely to face opposition from environmental groups. Campaigner Lorraine Mann said: "I'd be surprised a tourist resort on a former nuclear site held much appeal for people because of the possibility of contamination. It's not something that would appeal to me."

Steen Parish, the Scottish Green's candidate for the area in the forthcoming Scottish elections, said: "Even Monty Burns from The Simpsons would have rejected this."

Patrick Harvie, the party's co-convener, added: "This sounds like a properly hare-brained scheme"

EDF Energy, owner of Hunterston B, which is scheduled to be decommissioned from 2016, said: "Our prime concern is the safe and secure operation of our site and any future proposals would need to take that into account. Hunterston B is scheduled to operate until 2016, and a decision on any life extension will be made by 2013 at the latest."