nuclear-news

Did France’s Secrecy Cause a Nuclear Submarine Collision?

TIME by Eben Harrell 17 Feb 09

A collision between a British nuclear-powered submarine carrying multiple nuclear warheads and a French nuclear submarine armed with a similar payload may have been the result of lack of communication between France and NATO nations, according to a former British submarine commander whose revelations were partially corroborated by an official at the French navy.

Sometime on Feb. 3 or 4, the British HMS Vanguard and France’s Le Triomphant collided in the mid-Atlantic. The accident probably happened because the two submarines were not aware of each other. NATO operates a traffic control system that alerts allied nations to the deployment zones of friendly submarines. The system is designed to avoid collisions. But because France is not part of NATO’s military command structure, it does not provide information on the location of its mobile nuclear arms to that system,………………………….French are particularly secretive due to their position outside NATO’s command structure. And past policy-level discussions suggest a concern over a lack of communication…………………………………While the intersection of two sonar-equipped nuclear submarines in a vast ocean may seem an unlikely event even without communication, there are environmental anomalies in the Atlantic that make a collision more likely……………………………………

…………..had a nuclear reactor been damaged on either boat, it could have poisoned the crew and spread radioactive waste for miles across the Atlantic………………………

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1879777,00.html?iid=tsmodule

February 17, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | France, secrets,lies and civil liberties