The MoD made no contact with the responsible local authority Continue reading
Tag Archives: Coulport
MoD, Argyll, redundant submarines and nuclear waste disposal
Much of the Scottish Media has spent the last two days headlining the Ministry of Defence’s Continue reading
SEPA ‘deeply concerned’ about nuclear leak into Clyde from Hunterston B
This is not the sort of minute particle the notorious Doonreay Continue reading
HMS Vanguard moved from Coulport to Faslane under cover of darkness and with heavy escort
At 3.00am on Friday (20th February) HMS Vanguard was moved, under cover of darkness, from the explosive-handling pierhead at Coulport on Loch Long into the nearby naval base at Faslane on the Gare Loch. The entire operation is thought to have taken around seven hours.
Vanguard was filmed by peace activitists as she came into the submarine base at Faslane with a heavy escort convoy of tugs, Royal Marine inflatables, Military Police boats and overhead helicopters.
The British nuclear submarine, carrying armed Trident missiles at the time, was involved in the now notorious collision on 3rd February with an equally armed French Navy nuclear submarine, Le Triomphant ,somewhere in the Atlantic. She was seen but not photographed coming into the Clyde on 14th February to unload her missiles at Coulport – and described then as bearing clear visual evidence of hull damage in dents and scrapes.
The ships’s move into Faslane in the hours of darkness is likely to be interpreted as an attempt by the MOD to disguise from the public the extent of the damage she has suffered.
For Argyll has already compared the widely varying return times to port of the two submarine’s involved and asked if this disparity can be interpreted by anyone as other than evidence that Vanguagrd was badly damaged and had to come home at very low speeds. She took over ten days to get back to Coulport from wherever the collssion occurred. Le Triomphant took three days to get back to her home port of Ile Longue near Brest in Britany.
So far, although our reports have received heavy viewing traffic, no one has come up with any other intrerpetation. It is hard to identify a possible location for the collision which would allow two relatively undamaged submarines, travellling at approximately the same speeds to return to these two ports in their respective known times.
All that the MOD has said of Vanguard’s post-collision condition is that the incident created ‘no compromise to nuclear safety’.
Mather calls for reassessment of defence spending priorities as Trident hits trouble
Angus Robertson MP, the SNP’s Defence Spokesman at Westminster, has put together figures on the projected maintenance costs of retaining Trident nuclear submarines over the next ten years at their Faslane base in Argyll.
Coinciding with this, a group of distinguished retired military officers has just released a statement describing the Trident weapons system as ‘irrelevant’ and ‘completely useless’ in contemporary warfare.
Angus Robertson’s figures, set alongside this statement, underlines a significant part of the policy basis of the Scottish Government’s stance on refusing to host the next Trident generation in Scotland.
In outlining and welcoming the information drawn up by his Westminster colleague, Argyll’s MSP Jim Mather, Minister for Enterprise, Energy and Tourism, says:
‘Careful questioning of Quentin Davies, Minister of State for Defence Equipment and Support, by Angus Robertson MP has revealed that maintenance costs for the Trident weapons system, based at Faslane on the Clyde, will soar to £1.5 billion over the next ten years.
‘This is in spite of the fact that only last week in a letter to The Times, Field Marshall Lord Bramall and Generals Lord Ramsbotham and Sir Hugh Beach condemned Trident as “irrelevant” and “completely useless” and challenged the wisdom of even considering the longer term renewal of the deterrent system that would cost in the region of £25 billion.
‘As Angus Robertson observed, “This intervention has exposed the stark truth about the UK’s weapons of mass destruction and even senior defence chiefs now concede that they are a useless waste of money.” The SNP has consistently opposed the presence and projected use of these weapons and to contemplate spending even more and more badly needed financial resources at a time when we face a period of recession is to compound an existing folly.
‘We have heard on a regular basis over many years that the MOD is unable adequately to supply our troops serving in combat situations overseas and more recently that the long standing link with the faithful Ghurkhas from Nepal is likely to be severed because we lack the finance to meet our obligations to them.
‘This would seem to be a suitable time to reassess priorities and show the world a lead by giving up the pretence and the madness of the UK’s so-called independent nuclear deterrent’.
Cost of looking after Vanguard Trident submarines at Faslane and Coulport to rise from £95m pa to £161m pa
A Parliamentary question on the cost of the Vanguard submarine fleet on the Clyde was raised by Angus Robertson MP, SNP Defence spokesman at Westminster.
In response, UK Defence Minister Quentin Davies has said that the annual cost of maintaining and overhauling the four Trident-armed Vanguard submarines will rise from £93m pa in 2008-2009 ro £161m pa in 2013-2014.
Both submarines and Trident missiles are based in Argyll – the submarines at Faslane on the Gare Loch and the Trident warheads stored nearby at Coulport on Loch Long, many awaiting transport to AWE Burghfield in Berkshire for servicing.
Being careful about interpreting politicians’ information, For Argyll has a residual query on whether these figures include the cost of maintaining the Trident missiles. Although the ageing Vanguard submaries carry Trident missiles, the maintenacne of the missiles themselves will be a different contract. Mr Davies may well have given an overall figure – but then again he may not. We are raising this matter with Angus Robertson.
For Argyll reported yesterday (21st December 2008) that the British Government no longer has a stake in Atomic Weaopons Estabishment (AWE) Management Ltd, having sold its remaining AWE stake to Californian company, Jacobs engineering. AWE Management Lts operates the nuclear weapons factory at Aldermaston and the nuclear weapons maintenance facility at Burghfield, both in Berkshire. It is now a private company and 60% American owned.
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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
Safety breaches at MOD’s Argyll nuclear bomb bases rise by 300% in six years
In 2006 – 2007 there were one hundred incidents breaching safety at the Ministry of Defence (MOD) nuclear bases in Argyll, Faslane and Coulport. These were not minor lapses. They included dropping a reactor control rod, breaching reactor containment, spilling radioactive materials, contaminating workers, shutting down reactors along with over thirty power failures.
The two most serious events in 2006 – 2007 occurred on Trident nuclear submarines at the base in September and December 2006. Both of these incidents saw radioactive coolant spilled from faulty hoses. One of these spillages contaminated a worker’s shoe.
The first of these submarine incidents – along with nineteen other breaches, is described as having ‘actual or potential for a contained release within building or submarine’. The second submarine accident was said to have ‘high potential for actual radioactive release to the environment’. Forty more incidents had ‘potential for future release by failure to adopt good practice and continuous improvement’ – in other words, there’s a time release factor involved here.
Of the remaining thirty-nine incidents recorded in 2006 – 2007, the MOD say there was ‘no or little potential release’.
An Internal MOD report revealing these ‘nuclear safety events’ also showed that the 2006 – 2007 accident rate was 40% higher than the previous year and 300% higher than in 2000 – 2001.
The report showed that 41 of the 100 breaches in this period were due to ‘operator error’; 24 were down to ‘equipment failure’; and at least 20 happened on one of the four Vanguard ‘bomber’ submarines which operate from Faslane. Each of these can take up to 48 nuclear warheads to sea on Trident missiles.
In response to The Faslane / Coulport safety record being condemned as ‘an absolute disgrace’ by SNP MSP Bill Kidd, the Ministry of Defence declares that safety standards are improving. Either the evidence is against them or there’s a lot we still don’t know.
The Sunday Herald (28th September 2008) quotes the MOD’s defence for this rising accident record is that it has introduced new and more rigorous reporting procedures and that this has produced an apparent rise in breaches of safety. This is a bit of an own goal. It suggests that the current situation is no different than it has been for many years – just that it just didn’t use to look so bad.
There can be no doubt that these insights into operations at Faslane and Coulport will be of considerable concern to those living near them and to the families of those working in them. Workers at such establishments themselves tend to become quite blase about the nature of what they do and what they work with. This itself can create the context where such accidents happen.
The MOD cite overstretched staff as a potential contributing cause and For Argyll has reported earlier on the risk to the base of staff shortages. These are of an order which may see the Faslane submarines confined to base within eighteen months for lack of qualified staff to take them on patrol.
The Scottish Government has determined that there will no Trident replacement. This report can do little other than confirm its resolve.
Former Lord Advocate calls for review of devolved power over nuclear weapons
Lord Murray, former Lord Advocate, has called on the Calman Commission established by the UK Government to review devolution, to examine ways of bringing under Scottish control the weapons of mass destruction stored here (in Argyll). In doing this, Lord Murray has lent his support to ongoing calls for such action from trade unionists, religious leaders and anti-nuclear campaigners.
The former Lord Advocate argues that the use of such weapons is illegal and that the very possession of them may contravene international law. He recommends that their control should be incorporated into Scotland’s constitutional arrangements.
As we have reported before, around two hundred thermo-nuclear warheads are stored at Coulport on the Rosneath peninsula, in the Royal Navy Armaments depot there. Up to forty-eight of these are taken to sea from Faslane on the Gare Loch, eight miles away, in one of the four Trident nuclear submarines operating out of there under the Clyde’s reliable cloud cover.
The Calman Commission was established by Gordon Brown in December 2007 following a request from former Leader of the Holyrood Labour MSPs, Wendy Alexander and with the support of Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives but not of the Scottish Government.
Submissions already made to the Commission on the subject of nuclear weapons include those from trade union, Unison; the Church of Scotland; and the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
Unison wants to see control over nuclear weapons in Scotland pass to the Scottish Government. It notes the majority votes of both Scottish MPs at Westminster and MSPs at Holyrood against the replacement of Trident. It suggests that these votes indicate that this is the view of the Scottish people and that devolved controls would enable such views to guide action.
The Church of Scotland points out that Scottish public opinion on nuclear weapons and on the replacement of Trident is very different from that of the UK as a whole. It suggests that the Commission might explore ways in which the views and wishes of different parts of the UK might be reflected in some new structure.
The Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament points out, through co-ordinator John Ainslie, that a change of one line of a Scotland Act clause reserving control of nuclear weapons to Westminster might be enough ‘to give the Scottish Parliament the power to prohibit their deployment in Scotland’. Cardinal Keith O’Brien, Roman Catholic Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh has supported the Scottish CND submission.
With Couport and Faslane – and weapons storage silos in Glen Douglas – all in Argyll, there is considerable local interest in this matter.
The Commission is to publish its first report before the end of this year with its final report to come in 2009.
High court ruling on MOD job cuts goes against Prospect union
Mr Justice Wyn Williams has delivered his High Court ruling on the case brought against the Ministry of Defence (MOD) by Prospect, representing professional defence industry workers. The union had argued for a judicial review, on the basis that the MOD’s ‘early release’ scheme was ‘unlawful’ in avoiding normal rates of severance pay which – in 2006 / 07 had cost £17 million. Mr Justice Williams rejected this call, saying that he had “reached the clear conclusion that this claim for judicial review must fail”.
The MOD’s defence was that it wanted to give workers ‘maximum flexibility’ to leave the service early. Given that the ‘early release scheme’ offers workers leaving the service in these circumstances considerably less than would be the case if they left on compulsory early retirement or redundancy terms, it is a moot point which side is likely to achieve that ‘maximum flexibility’.
Argyll must now wait and see what impact this has on the significant workforce employed on the wide spectrum of defence establishments here. As we have published earlier, it is known that the senior management of the Faslane / Coulport base is considering the feasibility of privatising services at the base, the UK’s major nuclear submarine facility.