Radioactive water from the base where the British are located nuclear bombse was released into the sea after dilapidated pipes burst several times, official documentation reveals.
Radioactive material got into Loch Long, a sea bay near Glasgow in the west of Scotland, because the Royal Navy did not adequately maintain the network of 1500 water pipes at the base, The Guardian learns.
The Cullport Ordnance Depot, on the shores of Loch Long, is one of the UK's most guarded and secretive military installations. It houses the Royal Navy's stockpile of nuclear warheads for the fleet of four Trident-armed submarines, which are moored nearby.
Documents obtained by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) indicate that as many as half of the components at the base had exceeded their expected lifetime at the time of the leak.
Sepa said the Culport flood was caused by "maintenance deficiencies" which led to the release of "unnecessary radioactive waste" in the form of low levels of tritium, which is used in nuclear warheads.
The six-year battle for information
Details of the leaks were revealed in a collection of confidential reports and emails obtained by investigative website The Ferret and shared with The Guardian. The MoD and Sepa tried to keep them secret, but they were released at the behest of the Scottish Information Commissioner, David Hamilton, after a six-year fight by journalists to access the documents.
The British government argued that the documents must remain secret for reasons of national security, but Hamilton ruled in June that most must be released, saying their disclosure could threaten "reputation" rather than national security. They were released in August, after a further delay as the Ministry of Defense asked for more time to review them due to "additional national security issues".
How the contamination occurred
Sepa documents show that a pipe burst at Coolport in 2010 and then twice more in 2019. In August 2019, a leak released a "significant amount of water" that flooded the nuclear weapons processing area.
The water was thus contaminated with low levels of tritium and reached Loch Long Bay through an open drain.
Although Sepa emphasizes that the levels of radioactivity are very low and do not pose a threat to human health, they discovered that "deficiencies in maintenance and management" led to the unnecessary generation of radioactive waste. Following an internal investigation and inspection of Sepa, the Ministry of Defense promised 2020 measures in March 23 to prevent new shootings and floods. It admitted that the lack of preparedness had caused "confusion", "disruption of access control" and "a lack of risk communication".
However, in 2021, the pipes burst two more times, prompting another inspection. Sepa then stated that progress in implementing the promised measures "was slow and in many cases delayed."
"Shocking and scandalous"
David Cullen, a nuclear weapons expert at London-based think tank Basic, said the repeated incidents were shocking and the attempts to cover them up were "scandalous".
"The Ministry of Defense has been running a nearly £10bn infrastructure program for almost 2022 years and clearly they still don't have a proper asset management system in place in XNUMX. This careless approach is common in the nuclear weapons program and is a direct result of a lack of oversight," he said.
Source: The Guardian
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