Serious concern over ageing MoD radioactive waste plant at Faslane

The Sunday Herald (16th May) ran a detailed expose of a significant number of failures in nuclear safety procedures at MoD bases at Faslane and in the safe management of nuclear bombs at Coulport, both in Argyll.

This important investigative piece was fuelled by material obtained by the paper under Freedom of Information legislation, including annual MoD reports on health, safety and environmental impacts for the years 2007-2008 and 2008-2009.

The article referred to the situation with the Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) ageing radioactive waste plant at Faslane.

There has been governmental concern at UK level that the MoD’s failure to invest in replacing this plant will render it unsafe within four years.

The Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) has long been frustrated by its statutory inability to impact on unsatisfactory practice at Faslane. Documents from SEPA obtained by The Herald have shown that the Defence Nuclear Safety  Regulator (DNSR) are anxious about the status of the radioactive waste facility.

In 2008, a leak into the Gareloch from HMS Torbay, which we reported,  was the third in five years and compelled the MoD ‘to scrap’ (whatever that means) ‘some of its radioactive waste facilities and upgrade others’.

A deadline of 2014 has now been set for the MoD to replace these facilities completely and neither the DNSR nor SEPA are sanguine about the safety of the current facility after that date.

As with the former RAF airbase at Machrihanish, the MoD has had decades of ‘regulation with a light touch’ and its procedural and maintenance standards have regularly been fund wanting.

In the case of the Machrihanish airbase, currently up for disposal and the subject of a planned community buy out, the MoD have been shown by For Argyll to be extremely cavalier about safety standards.

It declared to us categorically that it had carried out ‘ground assessments’ that had confirmed that there was no radioactive contamination on the site – a statement from which it swiftly retreated when evidence of such tests and their specific results was called for.

The position now is that the MoD has admitted that appropriate tests are still to be carried out – yet potential  buyers are being shown around the site, including the areas, such as Site 1 with its underground armaments silos, most likely to be contaminated.

Argyll and Bute Council, concerned about the situation, has now notified SEPA, under the European Liability Directive, to institute an independent assessment of the site.

With the replacement of the radioactive waste plant at Faslane,  the worry is that the MoD’s  funereal pace is driven by budgetary pressures, that it is dragging its heels for as long as possible to leave it free to deploy funds elsewhere.

The trouble here is that delay reduces the time available to replace the existing plant within its design life, making for an enforced and risky extension of a life already showing dangerous signs of morbidity.

Note: With nuclear waste storage a live issue at the moment, here is a research piece we published on the issue in early November 2009: MoD, Argyll, redundant submarines and nuclear waste disposal.