Industrial partners on the project include Sellafield, the National Nuclear Laboratory, BAE Systems and Network Rail.
The Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant has been shut down because of severe weather conditions.
BBC: Sellafield shutdown: Severe weather closes nuclear site
About 9, 000 people are employed at Sellafield where radioactive waste lies in ponds and silos.
Currently, it is stored above ground on sites around the UK, mostly at Sellafield.
It also remains a Cumbrian problem as 75% of it is stored above ground at Sellafield.
Japan, Germany and Switzerland all stopped Sellafield fuel shipments because of the safety concerns.
CORE, the anti-Sellafield group, says he sympathises with people who might lose their jobs when reprocessing ends.
Sellafield nuclear plant is to undergo a value-for-money inspection after a report found it posed a "risk".
Sellafield nuclear firm has pleaded guilty to sending bags of low-level radioactive waste to a landfill site.
Sellafield Limited admitted sending four bags from its plant to Lillyhall landfill in Workington in April 2010.
All four of the bags were retrieved from the landfill and returned to Sellafield for correct disposal.
An application was eventually put in to use a site at Sellafield, but was rejected by the government.
BBC: NEWS | UK | Scotland | Nuclear waste sites list revealed
But if Sellafield did not exist, new inward investors might feel a bit more positive about the area.
John Clarke, chief executive officer at the Authority, which oversees the Sellafield site, said improvements had been made.
He said the threat from Sellafield was modest and the message needed to go out to the public.
Up to 50 jobs could be created at Sellafield in the development of nuclear batteries to power spacecraft.
Mr Nesbitt said the British-Irish Council of ministers was the proper place to raise any concerns over Sellafield.
The government must choose between giving Sellafield a breathing space and bringing forward the closure of the reprocessing plant.
The proposed facility could be up to four times the size of Sellafield and take 15 years to build.
Chemists at Britain's National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) plan to make the batteries using Sellafield's large store of waste plutonium.
The Irish Government has campaigned for the closure of Sellafield and has started legal moves to stop it operating.
Councils in the west of the county have expressed an interest in taking waste from the Sellafield reprocessing plant.
BBC: Lake District National Park may host nuclear waste site
Cumbrians often lament the fact that Sellafield is a rarity: a really big employer in their remote corner of England.
Around 240 of Sellafield's 1, 400 buildings are nuclear facilities and so far 55 buildings on the site have been decommissioned.
Councils in west Cumbria have expressed an interest in hosting an underground repository for waste from the Sellafield reprocessing plant.
BBC: Lake District National Park fears over nuclear waste store
Unite, which represents staff at the Sellafield plant, gave its backing ahead of a public meeting in Carlisle on Friday.
Alex Anderson, deputy project director for fuels and waste at Dounreay, said the site was working closely with Sellafield and contractors.
BBC: Nuclear material moved by train from Scotland to England
This has less to do with Sellafield's controversial environmental record than with the decline in the market for its main product.
The county council wants more investment in Sellafield, not only in the storage sites but in nuclear reactors and so on.
Sellafield managers made a final offer of a guaranteed 2% pay rise with a further 2% bonus funded by efficiency savings.
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