LONDON (Dispatches) — Radioactive water was allowed to leak into Loch Long, a sea loch near Glasgow, after repeated pipe failures at the United Kingdom’s highly secure nuclear weapons base, according to newly released official documents.
The leaks occurred at the Coulport armaments depot, which stores nuclear warheads for the Royal Navy’s Trident submarines. An investigation by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) found that aging pipes and inadequate maintenance were to blame for the release of low levels of tritium, a radioactive isotope used to enhance nuclear warheads.
Sepa’s reports reveal that up to half of the 1,500 water pipes on the base were beyond their intended service life when the leaks occurred. The agency described the flooding as a consequence of “shortfalls in maintenance,” leading to the discharge of “unnecessary radioactive waste” into the surrounding environment.
One significant incident took place in August 2019, when a burst pipe flooded a nuclear weapons processing area. The contaminated water, containing tritium, flowed through an open drain into Loch Long. While Sepa noted the levels of radioactivity were low and posed no risk to human health, the regulator criticized the Royal Navy’s failure to adequately manage the aging infrastructure.
Internal reviews and Sepa inspections led the Ministry of Defence to commit to 23 remedial actions in early 2020 aimed at preventing further pipe failures. Despite this, two more pipe bursts occurred in 2021, prompting renewed scrutiny. Sepa’s 2022 report highlighted slow progress on repairs and ongoing weaknesses in the base’s asset management.
David Cullen, a nuclear weapons expert at the Basic defense think tank in London, called the repeated incidents “shocking” and criticized efforts to keep the leaks secret. He said the Ministry of Defense’s decade-long infrastructure program had failed to implement proper maintenance systems, exposing a broader problem of oversight in the UK’s nuclear weapons program.
Because Coulport operates as a military installation, it is exempt from civilian pollution regulations, but Sepa said it holds the base to environmental standards “equivalent to those in environmental regulations” to protect the public and environment.
The Ministry of Defense, responding to the revelations, stated that it takes “the utmost importance” in safely handling radioactive materials and maintained that no unsafe releases into the environment had occurred.