Rob Edwards

Nuclear submarine safety bungle could put thousands at risk

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.

Failing to protect people from a terrorist attack on a nuclear plant

from Sunday Herald, 11 July 2010

If it had been real life, it would have been the most audacious act of terrorism since September 11.

When Exercise Lindisfarne got under way on Wednesday, March 17, at the Torness power station in East Lothian, it was to test the defences of Scotland’s nuclear industry.

And it revealed just how slip-shod safety procedures are in what should be one of the country’s most secure facilities. During the role-playing exercise a “terrorist” with a stolen security pass penetrated the Torness nuclear power station. He damaged the reactor, caused casualties and took several staff hostage.

The emergency response launched by the plant’s operators was so riddled with flaws that it failed to deal safely and promptly with the crisis. Exercise Lindisfarne resulted in British Energy having to revamp its emergency procedures to prove to government safety watchdogs that they wouldn’t go wrong again.

Secret post-mortems on Exercise Lindisfarne were compiled by the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) and the Office for Civil Nuclear Security (OCNS), both part of the government’s Health and Safety Executive. Their reports have now been released to the Sunday Herald under freedom of information law.

“Action to ensure safety of personnel and plant appeared to lack urgency at times and the station should correct this,” concluded the NII report. There were delays in tracking and making contact with the intruder, failures tracing missing persons, and poor communications.

25 years on, Chernobyl stops poisoning Scottish sheep

from Sunday Herald, 04 July 2010

Nearly a quarter of a century after the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl in the Ukraine exploded and spewed radioactivity across the world, it has finally stopped making Scottish sheep too hot to eat.

For the first time levels of radioactive contamination in sheep on all Scottish farms dropped below safety limits last month, enabling the government’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) to lift restrictions on farmers. Controls on the movement and sale of sheep have been in force since after the accident in 1986.

The Chernobyl reactor near Kiev scattered a massive cloud of radioactivity over Europe, after it overheated, caught fire and ripped apart because of errors made by control room staff. It was the world’s worst nuclear accident, and has been blamed for causing ten of thousands of cancer deaths.

Peat and grass in upland areas of Scotland were polluted with radioactive caesium-137 released by the reactor and brought to ground by rain. This was eaten and recycled by sheep, and has persisted in the environment far longer than originally anticipated.

In 1987 the restrictions on sheep covered 73 farms across southwest and central Scotland. Animals that contained more than 1,000 becquerels of radioactivity per kilogram were banned from being slaughtered for food.

Crackdown on Sellafield after radioactive leaks

from The Guardian, 31 May 2010

by Rob Edwards and Terry Macalister

The government’s safety watchdog is cracking down on Britain’s biggest and oldest nuclear complex after a series of radioactive leaks and safety blunders, despite private sector managers receiving multimillion-pound “performance-related” payments from the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has closed down a vital nuclear waste plant at Sellafield in Cumbria, and is taking legal action to force the site’s operators to improve their flawed safety procedures.

The HSE has also rejected a £40bn plan for cleaning up Sellafield because of proposed delays in dismantling ageing and potentially hazardous facilities.

The disclosures come at a critical time for the nuclear industry which is trying to convince Chris Huhne, the energy and climate change secretary, it is efficient enough to build a new generation of reactors.

But the crackdown is also embarrassing because Nuclear Management Partners (NMP) – a consortium involving Amec, URS and Areva – is believed to have made “profits” of up to £50m over a 12-month period.

Long quest for cancer data fails at last hurdle

from Sunday Herald, 30 May 2010

Scotland’s first, longest and most disputed freedom of information case has ended up keeping vital cancer statistics secret.

After two investigations by the Scottish information commissioner, Kevin Dunion, plus appeals to the Court of Session in Edinburgh and the House of Lords in London, numbers that might shed light on the links between children’s blood cancer and radioactive pollution have been kept under wraps.

The Scottish Green Party, which made the original request, is frustrated and annoyed. The Scottish Health Service, which fought to keep the information confidential, sounds relieved.

Back at the beginning of 2005, Michael Collie, a researcher for the then Green MSP, Chris Ballance, asked the Scottish health service for the annual incidence of childhood leukaemia in every census ward in Dumfries and Galloway from 1990 to 2003.

They wanted to test widespread suspicions that the debilitating and potentially fatal cancer could be caused by radioactive contamination. Plutonium from the Sellafield nuclear plant in Cumbria washes up on the Solway coast, and has been detected around the shoreline.

Nuclear submarines went to sea with potentially disastrous defect

from The Guardian, 02 May 2010

by Severin Carrell and Rob Edwards

Two British nuclear submarines went to sea with a potentially disastrous safety problem that left both vessels at risk of a catastrophic accident, the Guardian can reveal.

Safety valves designed to release pressure from steam generators in an emergency were completely sealed off when the nuclear hunter killers Turbulent and Tireless left port, a leaked memo discloses.

The problem went undetected on HMS Turbulent for more than two years, during which time the vessel was on operations around the Atlantic, and visited Bergen in Norway, the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, and Faslane naval base near Glasgow.

It was not noticed on HMS Tireless for more than a year, and was finally detected last month, two months after Tireless started sea trials from its home port at Devonport naval base in Plymouth.

Government under fire for U-turn on nuclear dumps

from Sunday Herald, 11 April 2010

An attempt by the Scottish government to quietly abandon its opposition to dumping nuclear waste underground has come under fierce attack from local authorities, environmental groups and experts.

They say that radioactive waste disposed of down holes in the ground could leak into the groundwater and soil and contaminate future generations. The waste remains dangerous for thousands of years.

Ministers are being urged to revert to their original plan to put the waste in stores above the ground where it can be managed, monitored and kept safe.

The Scottish National Party was elected in 2007 on a promise to “say no to new nuclear power stations or dumps”. The environment minister, Richard Lochhead, condemned burying nuclear waste underground as an “out of sight, out of mind policy” that should not extend to Scotland.

Is Scotland safe from nuclear submarine crashes in the Clyde?

from Sunday Herald, 04 April 2010

The Royal Navy has failed to minimise the risk of nuclear submarines colliding with oil tankers or cruise ships in the Firth of Clyde, according to a report by the Ministry of Defence’s internal safety watchdog.

The Defence Nuclear Safety Regulator (DNSR) says that naval plans meant to protect Scotland from submarine accidents in the Clyde and on the north west coast are riddled with flaws. 

There are “difficulties” with commercial shipping in the Clyde, it reveals. At some submarine berths, weather information is outdated, maps are inadequate and there haven’t been any emergency exercises for years.

The DNSR report, secret until it was released under freedom of information law, has prompted calls for a ban on the use of submarine berths. It has also heightened fears of radioactive leaks from submarine reactors.

There are designated berths for the UK’s Trident and other nuclear-powered submarines at the Faslane naval base on Gareloch and at the Coulport nuclear weapons depot on Loch Long. There is another berth in Loch Goil, off Loch Long.

There is also an official berth, known only as B4, in the middle of the Firth of Clyde off Gourock. According to shipping charts, it is close to the junction of three busy shipping lanes through the firth.

Safety plans for nuclear submarine berths flawed, says MoD watchdog

from The Guardian, 31 March 2010

Nuclear submarines have been using berths around the British coast despite the revelation of serious doubts about the safety of people living nearby in a secret Ministry of Defence review, seen by the Guardian.

The MoD’s internal watchdog, the Defence Nuclear Safety Regulator (DNSR), condemned the safety plans drawn up by the Royal Navy to protect coastal communities from accidents as flawed, inaccurate and outdated.

The plans would fail to protect people from radioactive leaks from submarine reactors, significantly misstated the likelihood of a major accident, and in some places did not take account of the risk of collisions with cruise liners and commercial shipping, DNSR said.

The revelations have prompted calls from campaigners for a ban on submarines using the berths, and fears that ports risk “indefinite contamination” from accidents. The MoD said the problems have been “addressed” but gave no details of any measures taken.

Ministers drop ban on dumping nuclear waste in Scotland

from Sunday Herald, 17 January 2010

Scottish ministers have abandoned their ban on nuclear waste dumping, opening the way for a proliferation of permanent radioactive dumps across Scotland.

In a major but unnoticed shift of policy, the environment minister Richard Lochhead has dropped his pledge to ensure that waste was only kept in stores near nuclear sites where it could be easily monitored and retrieved in case of leaks.

In a new policy document launched on Friday, the Scottish government is now also considering creating underground “disposal” facilities from which there would be no intention of retrieving the waste. This has led to accusations that the government could end up dispersing radioactivity in the environment.

It means that nuclear dumps could be created for centuries at or near existing nuclear sites at Dounreay in Caithness, Hunterston in North Ayrshire, Torness in East Lothian and Chapelcross in Dumfries and Galloway. The waste would remain dangerous for thousands of years.

Revealed: Thatcher wanted to dump nuclear waste in Scotland

from Sunday Herald, 17 January 2010

The former Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, insisted on investigating dumping nuclear waste in Scotland in defiance of fierce objections from her Scottish Secretary in 1989, Malcolm Rifkind.

Secret Scottish government documents obtained by the Sunday Herald have revealed deep divisions within the then Conservative government in London and Edinburgh. 

Fellow ministers fought angrily behind the scenes over the highly sensitive - and still unresolved - issue of where to bury the highly dangerous radioactive waste left behind by Britain’s nuclear power and weapons programmes.

The revelations come from more than 200 pages released by the Scottish government after the biggest and longest freedom of information battle so far fought in Scotland. Files on nuclear waste were first requested more than four years ago, and have only now been unveiled at the insistence of the Scottish Information Commissioner, Kevin Dunion.

The documents shed a fascinating new light on the internal squabbles that dogged attempts to solve the intransigent problem of what to do with nuclear waste, some of which remains lethal for hundreds of thousands of years.

Safety flaws queried in new nuclear reactors

from New Scientist, 02 December 2009

You'd think it would be the one thing nuclear companies want to be sure about: that their reactors can withstand freak weather or a plane crash.

Yet Westinghouse, the US-based company owned by Toshiba in Japan, has so far failed to convince regulators that its AP1000 reactors can withstand such events. "At this stage Westinghouse has not presented an adequate safety case for external hazards," concluded the UK's Health and Safety Executive (HSE) last week.

Government clean coal plants ‘will bust climate targets’

from Sunday Herald, 15 November 2009

Attempts by Scottish ministers to clean up coal so that it can replace nuclear power will lead to massive amounts of pollution and wreck the government’s targets to combat climate change.

A new analysis reveals that the £2 billion “clean” coal plant proposed for Hunterston in North Ayrshire would end up belching over 100 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over its lifetime.

Last week, the UK government gave the go-ahead to ten new nuclear power stations across England and Wales. None were proposed in Scotland, though, because of opposition from the Scottish government.

Instead, Scottish ministers have made it clear that they want to build new coal-fired power stations, fitted with carbon capture and storage technology to curb their pollution. On Monday, the Scottish finance secretary, John Swinney, announced that any new coal station would have to capture carbon from 300 megawatts of its electricity generation from the first day of operation.

But the new coal plant planned at Hunterston by Clydeport’s owners, Peel Holdings, is going to generate 1,600 megawatts of electricity. That means that four-fifths of the plant will produce pollution as usual -  millions of tonnes of it every year for many years.

No real sign of a nuclear renaissance

for Sunday Herald, 15 November 2009

France is the world’s biggest consumer of nuclear power, with more than three quarters of the country’s electricity being generated by 58 reactors. But even it has its nuclear headaches.

This summer, the heat put a third of the reactors out of action, because the river water needed to keep them cool became too warm. This winter the French nuclear industry is expecting to have to import electricity from abroad because several plants will be shut down for maintenance and repairs.

And last week Brazil had to shut down its two nuclear reactors because of a major power blackout caused by the collapse of transmission lines. The reactors need power from the grid to keep them safely cooled.

Nuclear workers told to ‘spy’ on their colleagues

from Sunday Herald, 08 November 2009

Thousands of staff at nuclear power stations across the UK have been told to inform on colleagues who might become “vulnerable” to blackmail or bribery by terrorists because of changes in their personal lives.

Moves by the government’s nuclear security agency to step up the vetting of civilian nuclear workers have been condemned by trade unionists and critics as “Orwellian”. But the agency insists the measures are justified by the threat of terrorism.

On Monday the UK government is due to give the green light to a major new programme of nuclear power stations in England and Wales. No plants are likely to be proposed in Scotland because of opposition from the Scottish Nationalist government in Holyrood.

The secretive Office for Civil Nuclear Security (OCNS) is charged with regulating security measures at 31 nuclear sites in the UK, including Dounreay in Caithness, Hunterston in North Ayrshire, Torness in East Lothian and Chapelcross in Dumfries and Galloway.

In its latest annual report, made available online, the OCNS reveals that it provided security clearances for nearly 15,000 nuclear workers in 2008-09. Personal details of staff were vetted to try and ensure that they would not leak sensitive information which could render nuclear plants more vulnerable to attack.

But the OCNS director, Roger Brunt, made it clear that he wanted to go further. Several initiatives had been launched to “raise the level of awareness of vetting issues within the civil nuclear industry,” he said.

“I would like to see all employees develop an awareness of how they can help identify and provide support for individuals holding a vetting clearance who may become vulnerable, for example, as a result of a change in personal circumstances.”

Revealed: where the MoD wants to dump its radioactive waste

from Sunday Herald, 01 November 2009

A secret shortlist of a dozen sites across the UK where the Ministry of Defence (MoD) is thinking of dumping dangerous radioactive waste from defunct nuclear submarines can be revealed today by the Sunday Herald.

As many as five of the sites under consideration for storing up to 500 cubic metres of toxic scrap from 27 submarines are in Scotland. They are the two naval nuclear bases on the Clyde at Coulport and Faslane, the Rosyth dockyard in Fife, the Dounreay nuclear plant in Caithness and possibly the Hunterston nuclear power station in North Ayrshire.

But confidential documents leaked from the government’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) disclose official fears that such stores are like to be regarded as “contentious” because of the “sensitivity of military waste being ‘dumped’ on other communities”.

Sure enough, MPs and MSPs representing the targeted areas have already warned that they will fight any plans for turning their regions into nuclear waste dumps. And the MoD has been accused of “secrecy and spin”.

Promises broken as foreign nuclear waste stays in Scotland

from Sunday Herald, 11 October 2009

Over 600 tonnes of foreign nuclear waste is to be kept in Scotland despite repeated promises by governments and the nuclear industry that it would be sent back to the countries from which it came.

The Sunday Herald can reveal that the Scottish government has secretly proposed storing the highly dangerous waste at the Dounreay nuclear plant in Caithness. But, under a bizarre radioactive swap scheme, a smaller volume of waste will be returned from England.

The revelation has prompted outrage from anti-nuclear campaigners, who have accused the Scottish National Party (SNP) of breaking its promises to prevent Scotland from becoming the world’s nuclear dustbin.

“It is quite disgraceful that any Scottish government should acquiesce in turning Scotland and the Highlands into a dumping ground for vast quantities of other people’s radioactive waste,” said the veteran anti-dumping campaigner, Lorraine Mann. 

MoD nuclear submarine disposal group hit by resignation

Exclusive, 11 October 2009

A Ministry of Defence (MoD) programme aimed at getting rid of the radioactive hulks of defunct nuclear submarines stored in Scotland is coming unstuck after the resignation of a veteran adviser.

Peter Lanyon, who has represented environmental and peace groups on government advisory groups for seven years, has quit because he says the MoD’s submarine disposal project “lacks integrity”. 

His resignation follows an MoD decision reported last month to sack two public consultation experts from its advisory group. Dr Jane Hunt and Dr Bill Thompson, originally from Lancaster University, have been replaced by a public relations company.

Revealed: radioactive waste leak into the Clyde

from Sunday Herald, 20 September 2009

Thousands of litres of radioactive waste have accidentally leaked into the Firth of Clyde from the Hunterston nuclear power station in breach of pollution law, the Sunday Herald can reveal.

The station has been accused by the government watchdog, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa), of breaking six legal promises it made to prevent people and the environment from being contaminated by radioactivity. Sepa says it is “deeply concerned” about the leak.

Environmental groups, politicians and local residents reacted with outrage to the revelation yesterday. They pointed out that any additional radiation in the environment increased the risk of cancers and other illnesses.

They also demanded to know why the accident, which occurred on 15 May, had been kept secret for four months. And they called on the UK government to abandon its plans to build a new programme of nuclear reactors.

“Once again the nuclear industry has shown itself to be totally inept when it comes to public and environmental safety,” said Lang Banks, a spokesman for the environmental group, WWF Scotland.

Plans for dismantling old nuclear subs in disarray after experts sacked

from The Observer, 13 September 2009

A ten-year programme by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to get rid of the radioactive hulks of 27 old submarines is threatening to implode after the sacking of two of its leading experts.

Deep disagreements over the best way to dismantle and store Britain’s ageing nuclear-powered submarines have split the programme’s official advisory group. The Observer understands that up to eight of the 25-member group are now contemplating resignation.

They are angry that the MoD has ignored extensive consultations showing widespread public opposition to its plans. Most people don’t want the MoD to order new submarines while it is still working out how to dispose of old ones, and are worried about the radiation risks from cutting up submarine reactors.

Since Britain launched its first nuclear submarine, HMS Dreadnought, in 1960, 15 of the boats have been taken out of service. Eight of them are now moored at the Devonport naval base in Plymouth, and seven at the Rosyth dockyard near Edinburgh.

But storage space at the dockyards is limited, and a further 12 nuclear submarines still in service are due to be retired before 2040 (see table below). They include the four Vanguard-class submarines which carry Trident nuclear weapons and are based at Faslane on the Clyde.