from Sunday Herald, 06 February 2011
It is the kind of nightmare scenario beloved of filmmakers or doom-mongers: something goes drastically wrong with a nuclear reactor, and the submarine it powers sinks to the bottom of the sea, along with its crew.
But this weekend it looks less like fiction. For the first time it is a possibility being seriously canvassed by experienced Ministry of Defence (MoD) trade union officials as the kind of terrible accident that could be brought about by privatisation and cutbacks at the Faslane nuclear submarine base on the Clyde.
“The catastrophic failure of a key component in the reactor could lead to the loss of a boat,” warned Steve Jary, the national secretary of Prospect, the trade union that represents engineers, scientists and managers at Faslane.
The crash of an RAF Nimrod in Afghanistan in 2006 with the loss of 14 lives was regarded as a disaster by the MoD, he pointed out. “What would they call an accident involving the loss of a nuclear submarine, or even worse?” he asked. Submarines are crewed by a 100 or more sailors.
Prospect believes that safety is being jeopardised at Faslane, and is determined to fight what it sees as dangerous and shortsighted “creeping privatisation” by the MoD. It is backed by other unions, one of the MoD’s former senior safety officials, and recent internal reports from the MoD.
The MoD repeatedly insists that it takes nuclear submarine safety seriously, and that any changes it makes will not compromise safety. But the evidence to the contrary is mounting.
Faslane, on Gareloch, is the home port for the four Vanguard-class submarines that carry Trident nuclear missiles, as well as other reactor-driven submarines. Last August it took responsibility for the Royal Navy’s newest nuclear submarine, HMS Astute.
The submarines are docked, loaded, maintained and repaired at Faslane. The base employs up to 7,000 workers, and the work there has been increasingly contracted out by the MoD to the £3 billion private engineering giant, Babcock.
Prospect’s main concern is the severe depletion of MoD experts overseeing safety at Faslane. The union pointed out that several years ago there used to be 42 MoD officials working with Babcock to ensure the safety of nuclear submarine operations, but they have now been cut to just four.
According to Jary, this meant that the base’s new naval commodore, 46-year-old Mike Wareham, was “currently unable to exercise the necessary control over nuclear safety.” Most of the staff responsible for safety were now on the payroll of Babcock, not the MoD.
Prospect had raised its safety concerns about this “at the highest level” within MoD, but they were ignored. “Pressure to make cuts was greater than the pressure to maintain a safe nuclear environment,” Jary said.
The changes were driven purely by the need to reduce the number of civil servants, Jary alleged. They would result in the MoD being unable to act as an “intelligent customer” for Babcock’s services.
The problem was that the core of engineering expertise was disappearing within the MoD, and can’t be replaced because no staff are being trained. “The MoD vision is to give all the nuclear safety expertise to Babcock, and that is short-sighted in the extreme,” he said.
Perhaps most damagingly of all, Jary claimed that the MoD staff cutbacks showed a failure to learn the lessons of the RAF Nimrod crash. The official inquiry into the accident by Charles Haddon-Cave QC, published in 2009, accused the MoD of sacrificing safety to cost-cutting.
“The Haddon-Cave report showed that the relationship between the MoD, the private contractor and the regulator was very cosy. The same is now in danger happening at Faslane,” alleged Jary.
With more severe job cuts on the horizon, the situation could only get worse, he warned. “These can only seriously exacerbate the risks to nuclear safety,” he said.
The Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), which represents MoD civil servants at Faslane, was similarly scathing about the MoD’s deteriorating safety regime. “There’s real concern about safety at the base,” said the PCS west of Scotland secretary, Ian Fraser.
“We don’t believe safety should be privatised. How a private contractor can guarantee the safety of a nuclear submarine is beyond me.”
Faslane, along with bases at Devonport and Portsmouth in England, was told last week that it would have to make a 25% cut in manpower and a 10% cut in “programme cost” over the next three years. Such deep cuts would further endanger safety, Fraser warned.
Fred Dawson, who was with the MoD for 31 years and was head of its radiation protection policy team before he retired in 2009, backed the union’s concerns. He warned that Faslane could be falling into “the same trap” as parts of the civil nuclear industry had in the past by not maintaining enough control over private contractors.
A series of newly released reports from the MoD’s internal nuclear safety watchdog, the Defence Nuclear Environment and Safety Board, have also highlighted official fears about the safety implications of cutbacks. “Some areas were barely resourced to deliver their outputs (including safety) with a considerable load on a small number of key individuals,” said a report form 2009.
The problem was getting so bad that the MoD was in danger of not even being able to recognize that there was a problem, it warned. Another internal report from the MoD in 2008 warned that failing to abide by safety procedures was a “recurring theme” at Faslane. There have also been a string of recent mishaps involving nuclear submarines (see table below).
Babcock was reluctant to say much about the union’s allegations last week. A company spokesman merely pointed out that the number of staff responsible for safety had not been decreased, just transferred from the MoD to Babcock.
The MoD insisted that no decisions had been taken about staffing levels at Faslane. “Nuclear submarine safety is given the highest priority and any organisational changes would only be implemented when there is full agreement that safety standards would not be compromised,” said an MoD spokesman.
“It is untrue to suggest that lessons have not been learnt from the crash of Nimrod XV230 in 2006. Work is ongoing to implement the recommendations of the Haddon Cave review as part of the MoD’s commitment to safety.”
The escalating argument over safety at Faslane comes on top of the controversy, revealed by the Sunday Herald last October, over a bid by a US-led consortium of private companies to take over the nearby Coulport nuclear weapons depot, which is still mostly operated by MoD staff.
For trade unionists, the idea that one of Britain’s key nuclear weapons facilities could be flogged off to the private sector is “incomprehensible”. But the plan, which is due to be considered by UK ministers in the next few months, still looks likely to get the go ahead.
Watching safety deteriorate at the Clyde nuclear submarine base
“I’m scared to see what’s going on. It’s shocking, and I think they are hiding things.”
So says an experienced official who has visited the Faslane nuclear submarine base on the Clyde regularly over the last three decades. “It’s all crisis management at the moment,” he told the Sunday Herald last week, asking not to be named.
The number of spillages, accidents and near-misses has increased since many of the base’s operations were taken over by the private company, Babcock Marine, in 2002, he claimed.
Another MoD official who worked at Faslane for nearly four decades remembered problems with the shiplift, revealed in an internal audit in 2005. “There have been spillages of radioactive effluent, primary coolant, at Faslane on submarines and on shore. It shouldn’t happen, but it does," he added.
“If you work for the MoD...there is no pressure to make a profit: the pressure is just to make sure you have a safe environment.”
Babcock didn’t respond in detail to the allegations, but pointed out that the MoD gave nuclear submarine safety the highest priority. “All engineering activities are the subject of extensive safety and environmental justification, including independent regulatory approval by both government agencies and the Royal Navy,” the company said on its website.
This is unlikely to reassure the former Faslane worker. “Since I left Faslane, I’ve been telling people that I moved from the west of Scotland before the west of Scotland disappeared,” he said. He was only half joking.
Ten military mishaps
date / place / what happened
October 2010 / off the Isle of Skye / HMS Astute ran aground for ten hours and damaged a fin in a collision with a rescue tug.
September 2010 / Faslane on the Clyde / The Royal Navy’s newest nuclear-powered submarine, HMS Astute, was hit by a ramp that slipped from a crane during loading.
February 2010 / Devonport naval base in Plymouth / The nuclear submarine, HMS Tireless, went to sea with a vital safety valve blocked off.
April 2009 / Barrow shipyard in Cumbria / A fire broke out in the conning tower of HMS Astute and damaged a fin.
March 2009 / Devonport / Radioactive water escaped from the nuclear-powered submarine, HMS Turbulent, during maintenance.
February 2009 / somewhere in the Atlantic / HMS Vanguard, one of the submarines that carries Trident nuclear missiles, collided with the French nuclear submarine, Le Triomphant.
February 2008 / Faslane / Radioactive waste overflowed into Gareloch while effluent was being transferred from the nuclear submarine, HMS Torbay.
August 2007/ Faslane / Radioactive effluent leaked into Gareloch from the nuclear submarine, HMS Superb, after a vale was wrongly left open.
October 2006 / Faslane / HMS Vigilant, one of the submarines that carry Trident missiles, suffered a “medium-scale” fire.
September 2006 / near Kandahar in Afghanistan / An RAF Nimrod aircraft crashed after a fuel leak and fire, killing all 14 people on board. An official inquiry said that safety was sacrificed to cut costs.
This confirms our worst fears znd the total disregard for the safety of all. pressure must be brought to bear on our politicians to act in the best interests of those who put them in Government. everyone needs to be made awre of what is really happening in this country.
Posted by: Ron Hanvey | 07 February 2011 at 11:46 PM