nuclear-news

Serious nuclear incident’ took place at Scottish Navy base

14 Aug 25, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/08/14/serious-nuclear-incident-clyde-faslane-navy-base/

MoD admits ‘Category A’ event at HMNB Clyde which will raise concerns about maintenance of Trident nuclear submarines

‘Potentially serious’ event at HMNB Clyde prompts concerns about maintenance of Trident submarines

Category A events are defined as those which carry “actual or high potential for radioactive release to the environment”.

The revelation will raise serious concerns about how the Trident nuclear submarines in Scotland are being maintained. It is also likely to prompt questions over transparency and why the incident was not known about until now.

HMNB Clyde houses every Royal Navy submarine, including the Vanguard-class vessels which are armed with Trident missiles.

On Wednesday afternoon, the SNP demanded an urgent explanation from the Labour Government in Westminster over a “catalogue of failures” including separate contamination nearby.

The MoD declined to offer specific details of the incident, which was first reported by the Helensburgh Advertiser. This means it was unclear if any radiation was leaked into the environment or if there was a risk of this taking place.

The incident is not the first category A incident to take place at Faslane, with the MoD having reported two such cases from 2006 to 2007 and a third that took place in 2023.

The incident was disclosed in a written parliamentary answer by Maria Eagle, the procurement minister, after she was asked to provide the number of Nuclear Site Event Reports (NSERs) at the Coulport and Faslane naval bases.

She said there had been one category A event at Faslane between Jan 1 and April 22, two category B, seven category C and four category D. A further five events were deemed to be “below scale”, meaning they were less serious.

Nearby Coulport, where the UK’s nuclear missiles and warheads are stored, had four category C and nine category D events over the same period.

Ms Eagle told Dave Doogan, the SNP MP who tabled the question: “I cannot provide specific detail for the events as disclosure would, or would be likely to, prejudice the capability, effectiveness or security of any relevant forces.

“I can assure the honourable member that none of the events listed in question 49938 caused harm to the health of any member of staff or to any member of the public and none have resulted in any radiological impact to the environment.”

She also said that NSERs “are raised to foster a robust safety culture that learns from experience, whether that is equipment failures, human error, procedural failings, documentation shortcoming or near-misses”.

Category B incidents are defined as having “actual or high potential for a contained release within [a] building or submarine or unplanned exposure to radiation”.

Category C incidents have “moderate potential for future release”, while category D incidents are unlikely to prompt any release but “may contribute towards an adverse trend”.

Radioactive water leak

It emerged last week that radioactive water from the Coulport and Faslane bases, which are situated near Glasgow, was allowed to leak into the sea after several old pipes burst.

The substance was released into Loch Long because the Royal Navy inadequately maintained a network of around 1,500 pipes on the base, a regulator found.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency, the pollution watchdog north of the border, found up to half the components at the base were beyond their design life.

David Cullen, a nuclear weapons expert at the Basic defence think tank, said attempts to hide previous serious incidents from the public had been “outrageous”.

Mr Cullen said: “The MoD is almost 10 years into a nearly £2bn infrastructure programme at Faslane and Coulport, and yet they apparently didn’t have a proper asset management system as recently as 2022.

“This negligent approach is far too common in the nuclear weapons programme, and is a direct consequence of a lack of oversight.”

Government accused of ‘cover-up’

Keith Brown, the deputy leader of the SNP, accused the Government of a cover-up in relation to the incident at Faslane.

Mr Brown said: “Nuclear weapons are an ever-present danger and this new information is deeply worrying.

“With repeated reports of serious incidents at Faslane and now confirmed radioactive contamination in Loch Long, it’s clear these weapons are not only poorly maintained but are a direct threat to our environment, our communities, and our safety.

“Worse still, the Labour Government is refusing to provide any details about the category A incident, or the full extent of the contamination, including who could potentially be affected.”

The SNP has vowed to scrap Trident, despite consensus in Westminster and among defence experts that the world is now more dangerous than at any point since the Cold War.

The accusations over a cover-up come after The Telegraph disclosed last month that Britain had secretly offered asylum to almost 24,000 Afghan soldiers and their families.

The Government earmarked £7bn to relocate Afghans to the UK over five years after they were caught up in the most serious data breach in history.

Despite enormous costs to the taxpayer, the breach was kept secret from the public for 683 days by two successive governments after the first use of a super-injunction by ministers.

An MoD spokesman said: “We place the upmost importance on handling radioactive substances safely and securely. Nuclear Site Event Reports demonstrate our robust safety culture and commitment to learn from experience.

“The incidents posed no risk to the public and did not result in any radiological impact to the environment. It is factually incorrect to suggest otherwise. Our Government backs our nuclear deterrent as the ultimate guarantor of our national security.

The MoD said it was unable to disclose details of individual incidents for “national security reasons”. However, it is understood all the NSERs were categorised as having a “low safety significance”.

August 17, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | incidents, UK | Leave a comment

Rise in nuclear incidents at Faslane naval base, that could leak radioactivity

Rob Edwards, The Ferret, May 25, 2025

There have been 12 nuclear incidents that could have leaked radioactivity at the Faslane naval base since 2023, The Ferret can reveal.

According to the Ministry of Defence (MoD), the incidents at the Clyde nuclear submarine base had “actual or high potential for radioactive release to the environment”.

But the MoD has refused to say what actually happened in any of the incidents, or exactly when they occurred. There were five in 2023, four in 2024 and three in the first four months of 2025 – the highest for 17 years.

Campaigners warned that a “catastrophic” accident at Faslane could put lives at risk. The Trident submarines based there were a “chronic national security threat to Scotland” because they were “decrepit” and over-worked, they claimed.

New figures also revealed that the total number of nuclear incidents categorised by the MoD at Faslane, and the neighbouring nuclear bomb store at Coulport, more than doubled from 57 in 2019 to 136 in 2024. That includes incidents deemed less serious by the MoD.

The Scottish National Party (SNP) described the rising number of incidents as “deeply concerning”. It branded the secrecy surrounding the incidents as “unacceptable”.

The MoD, however, insisted that it took safety incidents “very seriously”. The incidents could include “equipment failures, human error, procedural failings, documentation shortcomings or near-misses”, it said.

The latest figures on “nuclear site event reports” at Faslane and Coulport were disclosed in a parliamentary answer to the SNP’s defence spokesperson, Dave Doogan MP.  They show that a rising trend of more serious events – first reported by The Ferret in April 2024 – is continuing.

There was one incident at Faslane between 1 January and 22 April 2025 given the MoD’s worst risk rating of “category A”. There was another category A incident at Faslane in 2023.

The MoD has defined category A incidents as having an “actual or high potential for radioactive release to the environment” in breach of safety limits.

The last category A incident reported by the MoD was in 2008, when radioactive waste leaked from a barge at Faslane into the Clyde. There were spillages from nuclear submarines at the base in 2007 and 2006.

There were also four “category B” incidents at Faslane in 2023, another four in 2024 and two in the first four months of 2025. The last time that many category B incidents were reported in a year was 2006, when there were five. 

According to the MoD, category B meant “actual or high potential for a contained release within building or submarine”, or “actual or high potential for radioactive release to the environment” below safety limits.

The MoD also categorised nuclear site events as “C” and “D”. C meant there was “moderate potential for future release to the environment”, or an “actual radioactive release to the environment” too low to detect. D meant there was “low potential for release but may contribute towards an adverse trend”.

The number of reported C incidents at Faslane and Coulport increased from six in 2019 to 38 in 2024, while the number of D incidents rose from 50 to 94.

At the same time the number of incidents described by the MoD as “below scale” and “of safety interest or concern” dropped from 101 to 39.

The SNP’s Dave Doogan MP, criticised the MoD in the House of Commons for the “veil of secrecy” which covered nuclear incidents. Previous governments had outlined what happened where there were “severe safety breaches”, he told The Ferret.

“The increased number of safety incidents at Coulport and Faslane is deeply concerning, especially so in an era of increased secrecy around nuclear weapons and skyrocketing costs,” Doogan added.

“As a bare minimum the Labour Government should be transparent about the nature of safety incidents at nuclear weapons facilities in Scotland, and the status of their nuclear weapons projects. That the Scottish Government, and the Scottish people, are kept in the dark about these events is unacceptable.”

Doogan highlighted that the government’s Infrastructure and Projects Authority had judged many of the MoD’s nuclear projects to have “significant issues”, as reported in February by The Ferret. The MoD nuclear programmes would cost an “eye-watering” £117.8bn over the next ten years, he claimed.

He said: “If the UK cannot afford to store nuclear weapons safely, then it cannot afford nuclear weapons.”

Anti-nuclear campaigners argued that the four Trident-armed Vanguard submarines based at Faslane were ageing and increasingly unreliable. They required more maintenance and their patrols were getting longer to ensure that there was always one at sea.

“The Vanguard-class submarines are already years past their shelf-life and undergoing record-length assignments in the Atlantic due to increased problems with the maintenance of replacement vessels,” said Samuel Rafanell-Williams, from the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

“There is a crisis-level urgency to decommission the nuclear-capable submarines lurking in the Clyde. They constitute a chronic national security threat to Scotland, especially now given their worsening state of disrepair.”

He added: “The UK government is placing the people of Scotland at risk by continuing to operate these decrepit nuclear vessels until their replacements are built, which will likely take a decade or more. 

“The Vanguards must be scrapped and the Trident replacement programme abandoned in favour of a proper industrial policy that could genuinely revitalise the Scottish economy and underpin our future security and prosperity.”

Nuclear accident could ‘kill our own’

Dr David Lowry, a veteran nuclear consultant and adviser, said: “Ministers tell us the purpose of Britain’s nuclear weapons is to keep us safe. 

“But with this series of accidents involving nuclear weapons-carrying submarines, we are in danger of actually killing our own, if one of these accidents proves to be catastrophic.”

According to Janet Fenton from the campaign group, Secure Scotland, successive governments had hidden information about behaviour that “puts us in harm’s way” while preventing spending on health and welfare. 

She said: “Doubling the number of incidents while not telling us the nature of them is making us all hostages to warmongers and the arms trade, while we pay for it.”…………………………………

In 2024 The Ferret revealed earlier MoD figures showing that the number of safety incidents that could have leaked radiation at Faslane had risen to the highest in 15 years. We have also reported on the risks of Trident-armed submarines being on patrol at sea for increasingly long periods.https://theferret.scot/nuclear-incidents-radioactivity-faslane/

May 27, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | incidents, UK | Leave a comment