Argyll concerns as UK Government sells last stake in Britain’s UK-based nuclear warhead production to America

Without proper information to Parliament, the UK Government has now sold its remaining stake in the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) at Aldermaston to an American company.

The Aldermaston base produces Trident nuclear warheads and will produce the planned replacement which the current Scottish Government has vowed will not come to Scotland. Were they to do so they would be housed in Argyll at the MoD bases at Faslane and Coulport on the Clyde.

The Government has not disclosed what California-based Jacobs Engineering has paid for the shares. The suspicion is that it has been sold at a knockdown price because the UK Government borrowing is at such a high level it must sell what it can. If this is the case, other deals may follow.

Even  more seriously, the acquisition means that Jacobs now owns a 30% stake in AWE Management Ltd, the operating company owning and running Aldermaston and other nuclear weapon production and maintenance establishments.

These include the seriously troubled Burghfield, also in Berkshire. The Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) had to order Burghfield to shut down for a significant period because of persistent non-compliance with over 1,000 safety shortfalls notified to it over several years.

Burghfield houses some of the most sensitive and dangerous processes involved in nuclear warhead  maintenance – the infamous Gravel Gerties. (See For Argyll articles lnked below.)

The problems at Burghfield had and have a direct impact on Argyll. It is the establishment responsible for maintaining (rebuilding) nuclear warheads to a service schedule. When it was shut down the warhead storage facility at Coulport was overstocked with warheads requiring servicing and facing additions every time a submarine returned from patrol and unloaded its weapons.

For Argyll has reported on these matters before because they have the potential to impact profoundly in a variety of ways on health, safety and life in Argyll. These articles were:

• 2nd May 2008: Safety ban on crucial maintenance at Berkshire’s Burghfield nuclear weapon factory stops transportation of nuclear warheads to and from Faslane and Coulport
• 13th August 2008: Update on situation at Coulport’s nuclear warhead servicing facility at AWE’s Burghfield

With Jacobs now owning 30% of AWE Management, which also controls Burghfield, the company is not only wholly in private hands but 60% in American hands as a further 30% is owned by the huge USA defence conglomerate, Lockheed Martin. The final 30% is owned by Serco, a British private company.

The Government is simply saying that in any arrangements they have made British sovereign interests have been protected.

The most effective political response to this action ahs come from the Liberal Democrats. Their Defence Spokesman, Nick Harvey is quoted as saying: ‘The whole argument used for Britain having a separate weapons establishment is that this is required by the non-proliferation treaty, as technology sharing is not allowed.

‘We must therefore query the rationale of a US company having a majority shareholding in AWE. How does this all square?’

How indeed?

NOTE: A useful source of general news and information is the Nuclear Information Service