Denbighshire county councillors have given a hard no to government cash to entice them into discussing using the county as a dumping ground for nuclear waste.

Members of the authority were updated on the cash offer to listen to a pitch on plans for the waste to be buried in their area.

This would see communities get £1 million a year for listening to the sales pitch.

It would rise to £2.5 million a year, for an expected 20 years, if a county got to the exploratory phase with the likes of bore holes being drilled to assess geological suitability of a site.

Despite the financial incentive members were not keen on Denbighshire housing the waste.

Prestatyn East county councillor, Anton Sampson, said: “Nuclear waste never seems to be stored at the place it was created. It seems to be fair game to shuttle it by rail or on the roads. So I think for the sake of Wales and for future generations we have to adopt the Nimby (Not In My Backyard) approach,  and not at any price  approach on this.”

Llanbedr county councillor Huw Williams said: “There is one statement that needs to be made back to them and that’s we’re not interested. Wales is a beautiful place and we don’t want it in Denbighshire.”

But Llangollen county councillor Graham Timms took a different approach arguing that it would be hypocritical for people in the county to reject the offer out of hand.

He said: “I’ve been against nuclear power and all of its spinoffs for a long time.

“However at risk of being hung, drawn and quartered on my way out I just want to point out some inconsistencies because we’ve got a pile of nuclear waste which is going to remain radioactive for a very long time, some of it has a half life of 24,000 years.

“We’ve got this waste already, we’ve all been happy over the last few years to have our homes powered by nuclear power. And now we have a government in Westminster which has got to come up with a policy to work out ways of identifying sites. And it’s not good enough for all of us to say it’s not our problem.

“It is a problem, it’s got to be sorted out somehow, this can’t just be stuck in a waste site. I think we have to be very careful about condemning this nuclear waste site, it has got to go somewhere and it’s alright for everyone to say not in my backyard.”