Councils will be asked to store nuclear waste in deep underground vaults in return for government investment in jobs, road improvements and health screening, under plans to be announced this week.

Copeland council in Cumbria confirmed it was planning to put its name forward, a move seen as inevitable because most of the temporary waste is stored at the Sellafield reprocessing plant and the industry accounts for more than half of jobs in the area.

Elaine Woodburn, the council's Labour leader, said that if a safe site was found and there was community support, it would ask the government for an 'endowment' for the community. 'A repository [would] be here for thousands of years. ... Read full article