nuclear-news

‘In the early hours of this morning I was driving along the M74, through the centre of Glasgow, just behind a convoy of more than 20 military vehicles.

At the heart of the convoy were four special transporters carrying nuclear bombs which had a total explosive power equivalent to 42 of the bombs which destroyed Hiroshima in 1945.

Nuclear weapons are kept out of sight as much as possible. They are normally onboard Trident submarines or in an underground bunker at Coulport, overlooking Loch Long. But from time to time they need to be moved.

This means driving them by road across the length of Britain from the nuclear weapons factory at Burghfield in Berkshire to the Clyde. Britain is currently upgrading all the Trident bombs. The latest convoy was probably carrying these upgraded Weapons of Mass Destruction.

The detonation of just one Trident bomb would cause far more destruction than was seen in Japan at the end of the Second World War. There would be virtually no survivors within one mile of the explosion. Lethal radiation would be scattered for hundreds of miles, and eventually around the globe.

This is only the second time that the nuclear convoy has taken this route, along the M74 then across the Erskine Bridge. But the Ministry of Defence will be planning many more convoys in the future and some will be scheduled to travel through the heart of Scotland’s largest city.

This is the stuff of nightmares.

A few drivers who were on the motorway in the earlier hours will have seen the flashing lights, the line of police vans and the armoured cars escorting Trident. But most residents of Glasgow would have been in their beds, oblivious to the nuclear arms travelling through Rutherglen, Kinning Park, Bellahouston and Renfrew as they weaved their way along Glasgow’s newest motorway.

In 2011 the Ministry of Defence held an exercise which simulated a nuclear convoy accident at the Raith interchange on the M74. This envisaged a situation where plutonium was released, but there was no nuclear explosion.

Their post-exercise report showed that emergency services were unable to deal adequately with the scenario and that coordination of the response was disorganised.

The timing of the latest convoy shows that the MOD are not really concerned about public safety. They choose to send these vehicles across England on the one day that firefighters were on strike.

The MOD may try to keep these nuclear lorries out of sight, but they can’t keep them out of the minds of the people of Glasgow, a city which has a long tradition of opposing nuclear weapons.’

A MoD spokesperson said: “We take the safety and security of our nuclear convoys very seriously, and at no point has the security of nuclear materials been put at risk.”