More than 200 nuclear scares recorded at submarine base (UK)

Source: Times UK

October 23, 2007

More than 200 nuclear scares recorded at submarine base
Michael Evans, Defence Editor

Royal Navy nuclear-powered submarines have been involved in more than 200 radiological incidents at a single base in the past five years, according to a report released under the Freedom of Information Act.

In one case, experts at the Devonport naval base who were supposed to be monitoring nuclear reactor operations aboard HMS Tireless, a submarine with a history of technical faults, were found to be in the wrong vessel.

The Royal Navy said that since 2002 the majority of the incidents recorded at Devonport, the Navy’s only nuclear submarine refitting base, involved “either nil radiological or the very lowest radiological consequences”. However, details released to the Western Morning News revealed a catalogue of potential safety scares. The report showed that between 2002 and 2006 there were 189 recorded incidents, including 12 in the first two months of this year. The three most-serious incidents last year merited a safety-scare rating of Class 3, under a sliding scale system ranging from Class 1, the most severe, to Class 5.

John Large, an independent nuclear consultant, told the newspaper: “One would expect there to be minor incidents because of the complexity of safely looking after nuclear engineering. But some of these incidents represent major systems failures that simply should not have happened.”



Read more: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article2719216.ece

Nothing to see here, time to move on.
Forget about the six nukes sitting on the runway un-attended
for ten hours.
Just an honest mix up.

Stop confusing them. Nuclear reactors have the ability to cause damage due to the radioactive fission fragments contained in the core, but that's about the extent of it. The reactor I work at had what could be considered an 'incident' a couple days ago, they thought that they opened a valve and it turned out that they really hadn't opened it (this was a really strange valve that we never use also). That's an incident, but nothing really actually happened. I suspect most of these 189 incidents were similar in scope.