Over 700 nuclear safety events have been recorded over the last ten years at the Faslane nuclear submarine base where the UK’s Trident submarines are based, according to information released by the Ministry of Defence (MoD).
In response to a request made under the Freedom of Information Act, MoD revealed that 730 incidents had been recorded by the nuclear safety event reporting system at HM Naval Base Clyde – on average more than one a week. Submarines in the Gareloch recorded 261 incidents over the same period.
The Ministry was at pains to point out that the majority of the events had “no significant safety implications,” stressing that MoD’s incident reporting system “ensures that all events, no matter how minor, are reported and investigated, and remedial action taken where necessary.”
One of the events which occurred in the Gareloch registered as level 1 (“anomaly”) on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES), with all other events registering as level 0, corresponding to “no safety significance”.