Radioactive water from UK nuclear bomb base leaked into sea, files show | Nuclear waste

Official files, the UK’s nuclear bombs holding the nuclear bombs from the base of radioactive water again after the old pipes again exploded to the sea was allowed to infiltrate the sea.

The radioactive material was left to Long, a sea loch near Glasgow in Western Scotland, because a regulator could not properly maintain the 1,500 water pipe network at the royal navy base.

The weapon warehouse at Coulport in Loch Long is one of the safest and secret military areas in the UK. The Royal Navy holds the supply of nuclear war titles for the Four Trident submarine fleet nearby.

The files compiled by the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA), an observer of a government pollution, argue that until half of the base components, when leaks occur when leaks occur.

SEPA said that Selin in Coulport caused “deficiencies in maintenance ve, which led to the release of“ unnecessary radioactive wastes ”in the form of low tritium levels used in nuclear war heads.

In a report in 2022, the agency accused the navy’s equipment in the area dedicated to storing the war titles and repeatedly failed, and said that the 1,500 old pipe replacement plans under the risk of explosion were “optimal ..

Leaks, secret audit reports given to the investigation website and E -mails cache appeared. poppy and shared with the Guardian, where the Sepa and the Ministry of Defense fought to remain confidential.

They were released by the orders of the Scottish information commissioner David Hamilton, who made politics of Scotland’s laws of information after a six -year war for journalists to access files.

The British government insisted that files should be kept confidential for national security, but in June, most of the Hamilton decided that most of them should be released. The authority said that his statements threatened their “reputation”, not national security.

MOD, referring to the “additional national security issues ,, was broadcasted in August after more delays after asking for more time.

Nuclear war headings are supplied to the Trident missiles in Coulport, where the missiles are loaded on Vanguard class submarines before going to the sea for hidden patrols as part of the nuclear deterrence of England.

England’s nuclear weapon fleet has been in Faslane in a neighboring Loch named Gare Loch since the early 1960s. Tritium is regularly renewed in war headings to maintain the performance of weapons.

Sepa files show that there are two more in 2019 in Coulport and two more in 2019. In August 2019, a leak released “a significant amount of water olan, which has been flooded by a nuclear weapon processing area, which was contaminated with low -level tritium and passes through an open drainage fed by Loch Long.

While SEPA said that the levels of radioactivity in this incident are very low and did not endanger human health, and found that there were deficiencies that lead to the failure of the connection that caused indirectly unnecessary radioactive wastes in care and asset management ”.

After an internal investigation and sepa audit, the mode promised 23 action in March 2020 to prevent more explosion and flood precautions. He acknowledged that the lack of preparation caused “confusion”, “a fault under access control” and “lack of communication of dangers ..

However, in 2021, there were two more pipes explosion, including radioactive substances, including another area, and in 2022 he launched another examination of Sepa. 23 Progress in the completion of the healing action was “slow and delayed in many cases”. “Events emphasized the deficiencies in asset management at the naval base.”

Defense in London Thinkank Basic’s nuclear weapon expert David Cullen said that repeated pollution incidents were shocking and attempts to keep them secretly were “ugly ..

“Mod, Faslane and Coulport has not had an infrastructure of approximately 2 billion pounds for almost 10 years, and still there was no appearance of an asset management system. This negligent approach is very common in the nuclear weapon program and is a direct result of a lack of control.”

Coulport is exempt from civil pollution controls because it is a military base, but Sepa said that the base is committed to enabling both the environment and the public in accordance with the standards equivalent to environmental regulations ”.

Sepa, Coulport and Faslane’nin unrelated events since these “asset management and maintenance of important improvements”, he said.

With the evaluation of environmental impacts, he published data on radioactive discharge from Coulport and Faslane every year. He insisted that these discharge was not “no regulatory concern”.

“Most importantly to our responsibility to address radioactive substances safely and safely, the radioactive material has not been released in an insecure way at any stage.