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A catelogue of safety failures revealed in mock nuclear accident tests

Top secret mock nuclear accidents reveal catalogue of failures, The Ferret, Rob Edwards on February 9, 2016 Top secret mock nuclear accidents testing the responses of the military and emergency services have revealed numerous mistakes that would have led to “avoidable deaths”, according to official assessments.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) was so concerned about the problems that it carried out “an overarching, fundamental review” of arrangements for handling serious nuclear weapons incidents behind closed doors last year.

Assessments of emergency exercises by the MoD’s internal watchdog, theDefence Nuclear Safety Regulator (DNSR), expose a string of mishaps including life-threatening delays, equipment shortages, coordination failures and communication breakdowns. One report criticises officials for “substantially understating” the scale of the dangers facing the public in a staged briefing for the media.

The MoD took more than two years to agree to hand over reports on three nuclear bomb exercises in 2011 and 2012, despite freedom of information lawrequiring documents to be released within 20 working days. The reports, redacted by the MoD to keep details confidential, are being published today by The Ferret, in tandem with The Guardian (see below).

Two of the exercises imagined aircraft carrying nuclear weapons ingredients crashing and spreading plutonium and other radioactive contamination up to five kilometres away. They were both codenamed Astral Bend, one taking place at the Caerwent military base in south Wales on 24 February 2011, the other at Heyford Park in Oxfordshire on 27 March 2012.

At the 2011 exercise there was a major mix-up over how to deal with contaminated casualties. The fire service was criticised by DNSR for refusing to allow ambulance teams to take away seriously injured people until they had been decontaminated.

“The interpretation of the absolute necessity to decontaminate every casualty or person from within the determined “hot zone” did, and would in the event of such an incident, lead to avoidable deaths,” concluded the DNSR report………

DNSR pointed out that exercises had shown the need for “an overarching, fundamental review” of emergency response arrangements. This review was carried out in 2015, according to the MoD, but it has not been published.

The independent nuclear consultant,John Large, argued that if there were an accident close to an urban area the emergency response “would be totally inadequate  to protect many hundreds if not thousands of members of public.”……….

Anti-nuclear groups claimed that the exercise assessments exposed “major weaknesses” in the MoD plans for responding to nuclear accidents. “The MoD’s rickety old nuclear safety arrangements are not up to the job of keeping the public, emergency responders, or MoD personnel safe,” said Peter Burt from the Nuclear Information Network.

He added: “While ministers are racing ahead to replace the Trident nuclear weapons system, work on improving nuclear emergency plans seems to be a much lower priority and is proceeding at a much more sedate place.”

An earlier Astral Bend exercise on 12 May 2010 envisaged a US plane carrying nuclear weapons crashing and spreading radioactive contamination. Official assessments released in 2011 concluded that the MoD specialist response team “struggled to manage”…….

John Ainslie from the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament suggested that a nuclear weapons accident was “inherently very dangerous” and the emergency response was likely to be inadequate. He said: “If there is a real incident then we can expect there to be fatal delays in treating casualties and misleading information provided to the public,” he said.

The reports released by the Ministry of Defence……..   Photos thanks to Nukewatch.   https://theferret.scot/nuclear-bomb-accidents-could-cause-avoidable-deaths-say-mod-reports/

February 10, 2016 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, UK