As a former geological adviser to the UK government on nuclear-waste repositories, I would like to clarify some points in your discussion of the quest for a British nuclear-waste disposal site (Nature 494, 5–6; 2013).

Nirex was a UK government agency (not an “independent group”) that was set up in 1982 to find a geologically suitable site. In 1991, it chose Sellafield in Cumbria — one of two nuclear industry sites — from a list of 537 potentially available locations. Neither of these two sites was among the geologically most suitable, according to Nirex's seven-stage selection process. Its 1997 planning application for an underground laboratory at Longlands Farm, near Sellafield, failed because the inquiry inspector concluded that Nirex did not understand the site's complex geology (see go.nature.com/5p7yae).

The government's 2008 White Paper, Managing Radioactive Waste Safely (MRWS), put the fact that Cumbria volunteered to consider housing the waste ahead of scientific considerations. This contravenes international guidelines and practice in which national geological searches are conducted before seeking permission from local communities.

To some, this seemed like a back-door attempt to return to the Sellafield district, ignoring both the inspector's original report and the geological problems of the area (see go.nature.com/wob9rf).

You blame a “lack of political will” for the failure of the Nuclear Decommissioning Agency to “sell the facility to local residents”. On the contrary, the now-defunct West Cumbria MRWS process spent £3.5 million (US$5.3 million) on publicity over the past two years.

So Cumbria County Council has demonstrated strong political will by listening to both the geological and the democratic arguments against proceeding with a deep repository for nuclear waste in the region.