Exclusive, 13 September 2012
As many as 50 fires have broken out at Britain’s nuclear bomb factories in the last two years, according to the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE).
The admission came in response to inquiries about two hitherto unpublicised fires at Aldermaston and Burghfield in Berkshire in April and March this year.
AWE is due to appear in court in November, charged with breaching health and safety rules in relation to a major fire at Aldermaston on 3 August 2010. It has also been required by government regulators to review its fire safety arrangements.
AWE’s sites at Aldermaston and Burghfield near Reading provide and maintain the nuclear warheads for Trident missiles, carried by Royal Naval submarines. AWE is managed for the Ministry of Defence by three private companies, Lockheed Martin and Jacobs Engineering Group from the US, along with the UK’s Serco.
An insider tip-off that there had been a fire at Aldermaston on 12 April was confirmed by AWE. It was started by an overheated ventilation motor in a machine shop and was put out “within minutes”, AWE said - though the fire brigade had to be recalled two and a half hours later after “residual smoke” set off a fire alarm.
The government’s Office for Nuclear Regulation also reported in an online newsletter that there had been a fire at Burghfield on 15 March. According to AWE, a “small electrical fire” started in a radiator in a portacabin used as a security check point, and was extinguished “within five minutes”.
When asked how many other fires there had been since August 2010, AWE said its fire service had attended 15 “minor” fires on site. They included fires in a staff car engine, an electric heater, a motor mower and extractor fans.
According to AWE, none of these fires took place in or near buildings where nuclear materials were processed, or in areas where explosives were present. One was in a former nuclear facility which was "undergoing its final stages of decommissioning".
In addition there had been 32 “small and localised cigarette bin fires on site, away from buildings”, plus three off-site fires. “As we have more than 7,000 people on site at any one time, these call-outs are not remarkable over a two-year period,” said AWE’s spokeswoman, Rachel Whybrow.
AWE was accused by critics, however, of deliberately “hushing up” the fires. “AWE's neighbours have the right to know what is going on at AWE sites in order to feel confident that their safety is being given top priority,” said the Green MP, Caroline Lucas.
“Yet AWE has regularly failed to inform the local authorities, the press, or the public about fires on site and only released information subsequently in a reluctant and piecemeal fashion. This shows a complete lack of honesty and failure to treat local people with respect.”
Like other nuclear operators, AWE was required by the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) to conduct “stress tests” in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan last year. As a result, AWE is now reassessing the risks of fires causing a loss of nuclear containment and "potentially significant" leaks of radioactivity.
Peter Burt, from the Reading-based Nuclear Information Service, argued that many local people found it difficult to trust AWE on safety because of its secretive history. “AWE lags well behind the rest of the nuclear industry when it comes to openness and accountability and the company must learn to stop treating local communities with suspicion and distrust,” he said.
ONR’s chief nuclear inspector, Mike Weightman, accepted that more needed to be done to secure public confidence in the regulation of nuclear safety. “We are considering how we can make improvements to the current provision of information to the public regarding incidents and events on nuclear sites,” he said.
AWE’s Whybrow, however, disputed that fires had been hushed up. The two fires in April and March this year were reported to the local liaison committee and regulators, she said. “As these were minor incidents, and did not affect the public, broader publication was considered unnecessary.”
AWE was originally due to appear in Reading Magistrates’ Court in August, facing three charges of breaching health and safety legislation over the fire on 3 August 2010. But the hearing was postponed until 29 November 2012 to allow consideration of new evidence.
Thanks for pointing that out, and apologies for the error. I have now replaced the photo.
Posted by: Rob Edwards | 08 October 2012 at 10:44 AM
The photo here is of the Y-12 nuclear weapons complex in Tennessee, USA, not Aldermaston.
Posted by: Jack Cohen-Joppa | 06 October 2012 at 03:47 PM