Radioactive wastewater leaks at UK nuclear bomb storage base, UK Ministry of Defence denies it ever happened
After six years of media scrutiny, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) recently released documents stating that the Scottish military base storing the country's nuclear warheads had experienced multiple incidents of aging pipe ruptures, leading to the leakage of radioactive wastewater. In response to this disclosure, the UK Ministry of Defence insisted that "no unsafe release of radioactive material has occurred at any stage."
The Guardian and investigative website "The Ferret" reported on August 9 that SEPA released documents showing that due to lapses in maintenance of a 1500-pipe network at the Royal Navy's Coulport arsenal, radioactive contaminated water was discharged into Loch Long near Glasgow.
This arsenal is touted as one of the most secure and heavily guarded military facilities in the UK, housing nuclear warheads for four of the Royal Navy's strategic nuclear submarines. These warheads are part of the UK's nuclear deterrent, and when installed on Trident missiles, they are carried out to sea by nuclear submarines for patrols.
The documents revealed that the Royal Navy "failed to properly maintain" the 1500-pipe network at the Coulport arsenal, resulting in the release of "unnecessary radioactive waste" in the form of low-level tritium. At the time, half of the equipment at the Coulport base had exceeded its designed lifespan.
This is not the first time the base has experienced leaks. The Guardian reported that the pipes at Coulport burst once in 2010 and twice in 2019. In a major incident in August 2019, a failed pipe joint caused large amounts of water to flood an area used for processing tritium-containing weapons, and the wastewater flowed directly into Loch Long through an open drainage channel.
Tritium is a radioactive gas commonly used in nuclear weapons to enhance explosive power. Although SEPA determined that the radioactivity levels in the wastewater were extremely low and did not pose a health risk to humans, the agency clearly pointed out that there were obvious deficiencies in the base's maintenance and asset management, which "indirectly led to the generation of unnecessary radioactive waste."
According to The Guardian, after internal investigations and SEPA inspections, the UK Ministry of Defence committed to 23 measures in March 2020 to prevent similar incidents from happening again and admitted that the lack of preparedness caused "chaos," "failure of control," and "failure to communicate the risks."
However, two more leak incidents occurred in 2021, one involving another area containing radioactive substances. This prompted SEPA to conduct another inspection in 2022. The agency criticized the slow progress of the Coulport base's remediation, with most measures delayed, reflecting "deficiencies in asset management throughout the naval base."
The details of these incidents were initially sealed by the UK Ministry of Defence under the pretext of "national security." After six years of effort by journalists from The Guardian and "The Ferret" website, officials responsible for information freedom in the Scottish government ruled that the documents related to the events threatened "reputation" rather than national security. Finally, most of the documents were made public in early August of this year.
"The Ferret" website reported last year that the tritium emissions at Coulport doubled over six years, increasing from 1770 megabecquerels (MBq) between 2018 and 2023 to 4224 megabecquerels.
David Cullen, a nuclear weapons expert at the British think tank BASIC, stated that the repeated pollution incidents were "shocking," and the authorities' practice of concealing the truth was "extremely恶劣."
Cullen criticized the UK Ministry of Defence for investing nearly £2 billion (approximately 19.3 billion yuan) in infrastructure upgrades at the Coulport arsenal and another facility called Faslane, but ten years later, in 2022, they still lacked a mature asset management system. "This negligence occurs too frequently in nuclear weapon projects and is a direct consequence of inadequate oversight."
"The Ferret" website reported in May this year that since 2023, there may have been 12 incidents of radioactive substance leaks at the Faslane base. The UK Ministry of Defence acknowledged that these incidents had "actual or high likelihood" of releasing radioactive substances into the environment but refused to disclose any details.
Patrick Harvie, co-leader of the Scottish Green Party, said such incidents were "extremely concerning," adding that "accidents or substandard maintenance could lead to catastrophic consequences." He demanded that the Ministry of Defence be "completely transparent and take responsibility."
A spokesperson for the UK Ministry of Defence responded that they have always "taken the safe and reliable handling of radioactive materials very seriously," and "no unsafe release of radioactive materials has occurred at any stage."
Coulport and Faslane are both military bases, so they are not subject to pollution rules applicable to civilian sites. However, SEPA stated that they are committed to ensuring these bases "operate according to standards comparable to environmental regulations to protect the environment and the public." The agency annually assesses all radioactive material discharges from these two bases and their environmental impact. Based on these assessments, "there is no regulatory concern regarding wastewater discharge to the environment."
Original: www.toutiao.com/article/1840081081346060/
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