from Sunday Herald, 25 July 2010
Britain’s troubled £4 billion programme to build a fleet of new nuclear-powered submarines has been hit by a safety bungle that could put thousands of people in danger.
Emergency plans for responding to an accidental leak of radioactivity from a submarine under construction at Barrow in Cumbria have been condemned as inadequate by the government’s safety watchdog.
As a result, BAE Systems, the company that is building the new Astute class of submarines destined for the Faslane naval base on the Clyde, has been ordered to rerun an emergency exercise. This could cause further delays to the submarine building programme, critics say.
An emergency exercise, codenamed Indigo, took place at BAE Systems’ Barrow shipyard on Tuesday 13 July. Involving more a dozen agencies, it was meant to test arrangements for dealing with a radioactive leak from a submarine reactor.
But the exercise revealed so many problems with safety procedures that nuclear inspectors from the government’s Health and Safety Executive (HSE) judged that it had failed to meet their standards. Another exercise now has to be conducted within the next six months.
Experts pointed out that this left the 59,000 people who lived in Barrow at risk should an accident occur now. It would be wrong to assume that everything will be “alright on the night”, said the independent nuclear consultant, John Large.
“Allowing BAE Systems a second chance to improve its emergency cover seems to disregard the time required for preparing and proving this,” he told the Sunday Herald.
“That's six months or more during which the local community will remain uncertain about the radiological consequences should a serious incident occur at the Barrow yard."
Large argued that public safety was being compromised, and suggested that the first submarine, HMS Astute, may need to be recalled. Further delays could be caused to the whole submarine building programme, he alleged.
BAE Systems is in the midst of a two-decade programme to build four new nuclear submarines, each costing about £1 billion. There were delays with commissioning HMS Astute after a fire damaged its bridge fin in April last year.
It is now undergoing sea trials at Faslane, while three other submarines – Ambush, Artful and Audacious – are still being built in Barrow. In March this year the Ministry of Defence admitted that the programme was running nearly five years late and was more than 50% over budget.
According to insiders, nuclear inspectors were concerned that some of the management problems that hampered HMS Astute last year were still apparent during exercise Indigo earlier this month. This could delay the next submarine, HMS Ambush, they suggested.
HSE’s nuclear directorate confirmed to the Sunday Herald last week that BAE Systems “did not provide an adequate demonstration during the exercise”.
But an HSE spokesman added: “This does not mean the licensee would not have responded adequately had a real incident occurred - more that some of its arrangements were not as robustly demonstrated as we require.”
John Ainslie, the co-coordinator of the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, argued that it was dangerous to test a reactor in the middle of an urban area where thousands of people were at risk.
The failure of exercise Indigo showed that BAE Systems was unable to prove that it could respond properly to an accident, he said. “The company may be providing jobs for some of the local community, but they are putting the health of many more at risk.”
BAE Systems denied that having to rerun the emergency exercise would delay the submarine building programme. “While the results of the exercise demonstrated many areas of strength they also highlighted some areas where improvements were necessary,” said a company spokeswoman.
“Exercises of this nature are used as a positive learning experience, to demonstrate developments to arrangements and to present the opportunity to significantly benefit from lessons learnt,” she added.
“The company is using the opportunity of re-demonstration of an onsite exercise to enhance skills and experience of team members.”
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