Rob Edwards

Bending the rules on safety at the Clyde nuclear bases

from Sunday Herald, 30 January 2011

Rules meant to prevent accidents and radioactive leaks at the nuclear bomb bases on the Clyde have been suspended seven times in the last two years, prompting fears that workers and the public have been put in danger.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has admitted that normal safety standards have been relaxed on a total of 18 occasions since 2000 at the Faslane submarine base on Gareloch and at the Coulport weapons store on Loch Long. This was “for operational reasons”, the MoD said.

The Clyde bases have also been criticised by government safety inspectors for failing to improve their arrangements for maintaining vital equipment. These latest revelations come on top of a string of problems with submarine accidents, radioactive leaks and ageing facilities at the bases.

Faslane is home port for the four Vanguard-class submarines that carry Trident nuclear-tipped missiles at sea, as well as other nuclear-powered submarines. The Royal Naval Armaments Depot at nearby Coulport stores and maintains up to 200 Trident warheads.

Safety rules are changed when there’s a need to “provide temporary suspension of associated conditions and limits of safe operations, or the authorised scope of operations”, according to the MoD. But this was “rare”, it insisted.

Ministers backtrack on freedom of information under pressure from businesses

from Sunday Herald, 30 January 2011

The Scottish government has bowed to pressure from big business and abandoned plans to end the secrecy enjoyed by private contractors.

Ministers have shelved their proposals to extend the scope of freedom of information legislation to cover the companies that build and run schools, hospitals, prisons and roads. The move had been fiercely opposed by the companies.

Other bodies which will also now escape designation under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act are trusts set up by local authorities to run leisure and cultural activities, Glasgow Housing Association and the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland.

Cutbacks make nuclear bombs and boats unsafe, warns MoD

from The Guardian, 28 January 2011

The safety of Britain’s nuclear weapons and submarines is being increasingly jeopardised by worsening staff shortages and financial cutbacks, according to secret reports just released by the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

The MoD’s internal nuclear safety watchdog has warned that it can no longer ensure that the Trident warheads that crisscross the country and the nuclear-powered submarines that sail around the coast “remain safe”. There was a “lack of adequate resource to deliver (and regulate) the defence nuclear programmes safely”, it said.

The Royal Navy has been struggling to cope with shortages of skilled reactor engineers and scientists by restricting their time ashore, shifting them around and cutting back on submarine operations. But now these pressures have grown so great that such trade-offs are becoming impossible, Channel 4 News will reveal tonight.

The reports, marked “restricted”, are by the MoD’s Defence Nuclear Environment and Safety Board (DNESB), which regulates all military nuclear operations. They cover 2008 and 2009, and have been released by the MoD in response to freedom of information requests.

Revealed: Scotland’s bird killing fields

from Sunday Herald, 16 January 2011

They are being massacred in their thousands. Eggs are crushed, chicks trampled, nests smashed, baits poisoned, birds trapped and shot – and all to line the pockets of the lairds.

The shocking extent to which Scotland’s totemic birds of prey are being routinely killed by landowners to protect their sporting estates – and how they have tried to cover up evidence of their crimes – are exposed today by a Sunday Herald investigation.

An authoritative new report for government advisers shows that thousands of hen harriers are being illegally persecuted across huge swathes of the country. But publication of the report has been blocked by the landowning lobby, prompting a copy to be leaked to the Sunday Herald.

At the same time another expert study, due to be unveiled in the next few weeks, suggests that as many as 50 golden eagles are being illegally poisoned, shot or trapped every year in Scotland. This is far higher than previously suspected.

“Without a shadow of a doubt, large numbers of these birds are being persecuted throughout Scotland,” said Mark Rafferty, a former police officer who now investigates wildlife crime for the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

“To suppress a whole population takes a huge amount of organised effort, and that’s what’s happening. It is the grouse industry that is responsible. They simply won’t tolerate birds of prey on grouse moors.”

Bird killing: the disgrace that shames Scotland

comment from Sunday Herald, 16 January 2011

Birds of prey are genuinely awe-inspiring. Fierce, majestic, violent and beautiful, they compete with humanity at the top of the food chain, sometimes winning and sometimes losing.

They often infuriate landowners because they eat grouse chicks, leaving fewer for tweed-clad shooting parties to bag. So some lairds covertly allow them to be illegally killed - in their thousands according to the expert reports uncovered by the Sunday Herald today.

Most people would agree that this is a disgrace that shames Scotland. But the problem is this: what can effectively be done to stop it? Previous legal remedies, which have sought to get tougher and tougher, so far seem to have failed.

Nuclear safety at risk from staff and funding shortages, warns MoD watchdog

from The Guardian, 13 January 2011

Staff shortages and funding cuts at nuclear weapons sites across the UK have put the public and environment at risk, according to the Ministry of Defence's nuclear safety watchdog.

The analysis, marked "restricted", points to 11 "potentially significant risks" at bomb-making sites and ports housing nuclear submarines, documents seen by the Guardian show.

They warn that efforts to reduce radioactive risks have been "weak", safety analyses "inconsistent" and attempts to cope with change "poor". Formal regulatory action has been taken at two naval dockyards: Devonport in Plymouth and Barrow-in-Furness in Cumbria.

The reports also reveal that there is "no funded plan" for the decommissioning of Britain's 16 defunct nuclear submarines. Nine are moored at Devonport and seven at Rosyth on the Firth of Forth.

The reports cover 2006 and 2007 and were written by Rear Admiral Nigel Guild, chairman of the defence nuclear environment and safety board, an agency within the MoD that oversees nuclear safety. They were released in response to requests under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Aflockalypse now - or later?

from Sunday Herald, 09 January 2011

They’re biblical, they’re big news and they provide plenty of fodder for the doom-saying conspiracy theorists. But they might actually be warning signs of things to come.

When thousands of birds suddenly fall out of the sky, it’s eerie. People get unnerved and scared. They leap to conclusions about the wrath of god, the cruelty of nature, or even the end of the world.

Tabloid editors and online bloggers invent a word for it – aflockalypse – to make it more of a phenomenon. Scientists hold their heads in their hands, and complain that it’s all being twisted out of proportion.

And yet, there may something deeply disturbing going on behind it all - something that should worry every one of us. Are the mass bird deaths just a random freak of nature? Or are they, as some experts now suggest, another indication of the way we are irreversibly poisoning our planet?

Edinburgh school takes lead on cutting climate pollution

from Sunday Herald, 02 January 2011

“We need to be the change we wish to see in the world” was how the Indian activist and leader, Mahatma Gandhi, famously put it.

Now his advice has been taken up with gusto by an Edinburgh school which is seeking to lead the way in cutting pollution and waste to help Scotland meet its ambitious targets to combat climate change.

If the example of the Rudolf Steiner School in improving insulation, growing food and increasing cycling is followed by other Scottish schools, carbon emissions could be cut by up to a million tonnes by 2020.

The Edinburgh school is one of more than 800 worldwide inspired by the Austrian philosopher, Rudolf Steiner, who died in 1925. It caters for children of all abilities between 3 and 18 years old, and aims to provide a “holistic” education, integrating arts and science.

It has launched a project - under the banner “Being the Change We Want to See” - to cut its carbon emissions by 40% over the next ten years. The idea is not just to cut the school’s pollution, but to encourage staff, parents and the local community to cut theirs too.