Nuclear accidentsU.K. nuclear disaster exercise reveals worrisome lapses in emergency response
Up to six times a year, U.K. nuclear weapons are transported in heavily guarded convoys between production facilities in Aldermaston and Burghfield in Berkshire, where the nuclear bombs are manufactured, and the Royal Naval Armaments Depot at Coulport on Loch Long in Argyll. The trips are required because scientists must regularly examine the 200 Trident missile warheads in order to make sure they are operationally reliable and properly maintained. Every three years, the U.K. Ministry of Defense (MoD) conducts a drill aiming to test how various agencies respond to an accident involving the convoy carrying the nuclear warheads. An internal report on the last drill notes many problems in the response to the simulated accident, including five-hour wait for weapons experts, confusion over radiation monitoring, and ambulance crews refusing to take contamination victims to hospitals.
An emergency drill has exposed worrisome vulnerabilities in the ability of U.K. authorities effectively to handle a catastrophic motorway pileup in which a convoy carrying a nuclear bomb burns and spreads a cloud of radioactive contamination over nearby communities.
The Guardian reports that an internal report by the Ministry of Defense (MoD) reveals that the emergency services faced “major difficulties” in responding to the mocked-up accident near Glasgow because they received no help from MoD weapons experts for more than five hours.
The MoD reports, along with a video from the exercise, were obtained by the Nuclear Information Service, which monitors weapons activities.
The report goes on to say that the response by the twenty-one government agencies involved was disorganized.
Moreover, heated disagreements between staff from some of these government organizations and ambulance crews over how to handle and treat casualties contaminated with radioactivity at the crash site caused “considerable delay,” resulting in one victim being declared dead.
There were other problems: outdated, paper-based communications systems; poor mobile phone signals; conflicting scientific advice on health hazards; and confusion over radiation monitoring.
The Guardian notes that up to six times a year, nuclear weapons are transported in heavily guarded convoys between production facilities in Aldermaston and Burghfield in Berkshire, where the nuclear bombs are manufactured, and the Royal Naval Armaments Depot at Coulport on Loch Long in Argyll. The trips are required because scientists must regularly examine the 200 Trident missile warheads in order to make sure they are operationally reliable and properly maintained.
Every three years, the MoD conducts a drill aiming to test how various agencies respond to an accident involving the convoy carrying the nuclear warheads. The last exercise, codenamed Exercise Senator 2011, was conducted on 13-15 September 2011. More than 1,000 people and twenty-one public agencies were involved, among them police, fire, and ambulance services, local authorities, the Scottish government, and the U.K. Cabinet Office.
The Guardian reports that the accident scenario involved “a series of catastrophic, highly improbable events” which had a large truck suffering an offside front tyre blowout while travelling north on the M74, near junction five at Bellshill to the south of Glasgow.
The truck crashes through the central median and into one of three nuclear weapons carriers heading south. One weapons carrier swerves and topples over and burst into flames, resulting in plutonium and uranium leaking from damaged warheads. A second weapons carrier had to take
