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 attrADVERTISEMENT
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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.
