A conference in Helensburgh next month aims to show that people in Scotland are at risk from Trident nuclear weapons – whether or not they are used.
Entitled ‘Scotland Endangered: The hazards of nuclear’, the event will see journalists and campaigners including Ruth Wishart – who will chair a session – Rob Edwards, Arthur West, Brian Quail and West Dunbartonshire MP Martin Docherty-Hughes looking at issues including the transportation, contamination and degradation of nuclear material.
Ellen Renton, convenor of Helensburgh CND, said “Radioactive materials are transported on our roads, from our airports and on our railways, and our air and water are contaminated by radioactive elements and processes.
“The transportation, use and storage of nuclear weapons and materials have involved numerous incidents and mishaps, nearly all of which are in the public domain, and when taken together paint a hugely frightening picture of nuclear in Scotland — a major accident waiting to happen, and for which there has been little or no preparation.
“The likelihood of such an event has only been increased due to the aging of the current Trident system, and due to the financial issues stemming from the cost of Trident both present and future.”
Royal Navy Vanguard-class submarines which carry Trident missiles are based at Faslane on the Gareloch, together with Astute-class subs which are nuclear-powered but carry conventional weapons.
The Trident missiles themselves are held at Coulport on Loch Long.
The event will be held in Helensburgh Parish Church Hall from 10.30am to 6pm on Saturday March 17, with a livestream on independence Live.
Tickets cost £9 and are available via Eventbrite, with concessions £7.
Interesting guests “Ruth Wishart” included. Just wondering what rubbish will come out at this conference. It would be interesting to see if she has any experience within the industry to warrant her inclusion on the panel. All that I have seen over and over again in the Helensburgh Advertiser and other media sources is a biased opinion and a constant rant against the southerners like she always quotes. If she had completed any Nuclear courses or Trident training then I could fully understand her presence. However I would imagine nothing of the sort. It would be interesting to see if any of the panel have actually visited either HMNB Clyde or Coulport, but then again I doubt that to.
Yet I bet its money for old rope again because I bet it’s not being done for nothing especially at £9 & £7 a pop
Nuclear weapons are dangerous but probably less so that the nuclear submarines. The weapons are transported about UK in a way that means it is extremely unlikely to cause either an explosion or the release of nuclear material. If however somebody starts a nuclear war then everyone on the planet is likely to die a gruesome and painful death is very short order.
The submarines are trundled about the seas; they are taken apart and maintained on a regular basis. No matter how well maintained they are, in common with every other machine, parts are likely to fail. When you have temperatures and pressures at extreme levels, as in a reactor, these failures are more likely. If you have a catastrophic loss of coolant you are very likely to get a meltdown, like in Chernobyl or Fukushima, and the area surrounding these submarines can become lethal to everyone in the vicinity.
Time we gave up the pretensions of grandeur that these weapons demonstrate.
Meltdown as a result of a loss of coolant accident is pretty much impossible; even if all the back up cooling systems fail the last resort is seawater, of which there is an infinite supply. Even if there were a meltdown your conclusion is questionable; at Fukushima no-one has died as a result of radiation exposure, although plenty of people(over 1000 at the last count) have died as a result of the psychological trauma of being needlessly evacuated by a weak and ill-informed government panicked into doing something for the fear of being seen to be doing nothing by a rabidly anti-science and radiophobic press, cheerled by cynical carnival barkers like Arnold Gundersen and Helen Caldicott who offer hysterical soundbites that bear no weight once the laws of physics are applied to them but still convince the ignorant or the timid to be afraid.
The quote from the CND rep conflates civil nuclear power with nuclear weapons as though they were one and the same, despite the two having no connection. No doubt there will be no mention at this event of the benefits of nuclear science; the pollution prevented by the coal and oil fired power stations not built because of nuclear power, the lives saved by radiotherapy, medical isotopes and other radiomedical treatments, or food poisoning or the spread of pestilence averted by sterilisation of produce with gamma sources. On a wider issue, government policy on nuclear power is contrary and blitheringly illogical; it’s acceptable and safe to run existing power stations but building new ones would result in nuns and kittens being killed. Along with their “ban that’s not a ban” on fracking Holyrood is taking a worrying lurch toward luddism and anti-science with these policies.
So are CND against nuclear powered submarines?
You would need to as CND; I’m not a member. My comments are not based on ideology or allegiance but on the facts of the matter.
Facts? So I take it Mr Blackwood you must have completed the apropriate TTF Training RNAD Coulport training and the Aldermastin nuclear course? These are the courses that would give you the facts or are you just picking the snippets up from local journalist who also say they know all the facts? Before you go off in a tangent I think having competed all the above courses and spent over 27years on both Polaris and Trident submarine’s I do probably know a little more than yourself? One other question for you how many accident’s have taken place since 1968 with regards to either a NW or involving a British nuclear reactor?
We’ve had this conversation before. Regardless of what training anyone has what I said above are facts not opinion. Clearly you have been fortunate in your career but in the long run we cannot rely on good fortune to protect us from nuclear dangers. I do have a knowledge of how these things work and not from CND propaganda. I do know about the dangers involved and the safety precautions taken to avoid catastrophe. The precautions are robust and have protected us so far but nothing in infallible.
I would be surprised if you did not will know about the boat that collided with a French Submarine in the Atlantic; it limped back to the shiplift where it was taken in under cover of darkness. Those allowed in to work on it had to hand over their phones so that no pictures escaped. That was another “lucky” escape.
Do you remember the boat that had a reactor “problem” and limped into Gibraltar. The Gibraltarian government had to be “persuaded” that it would stay until made safe to move on; was it a “T” boat, my memory lets me down. That is in addition to the “Ambush” event where it collided with a surface boat in 2016 and went into Gibraltar.
Yes, there are accidents and nuclear difficulties with our submarines and no we have not yet had a catastrophic melt down. Let us all hope that continues until we can persuade our politicians to change things. At least here in Scotland we will build no more nuclear power stations which is a step in the right direction.
A contributor said that civil nuclear power and nuclear weapons have no connection. The first nuclear power plants in the UK (Calder Hall in Cumbria and Chapelcross in Dumfries & Galloway) supplied electricity to the national grid as a by-product of their main product which was weapons grade plutonium for nuclear weapons..
Just read the article in the Advertiser lol, funny how they failed to mention that Ruth Wishart is going to be on the panel? Funny that must be because she works for them, we can see now who and where their support is with.