DID YOU know that nuclear warheads are regularly transported for hundreds of miles along UK roads? Police and Marines escort these military convoys between the warhead factory near Aldermaston and the Trident submarine base in Scotland. No radiation warning symbols are carried and neither the public nor local authorities are warned of these nuclear convoys. Nukewatch UK monitors these convoys with help from people like you. Nukewatch are then able to keep MP’s, journalists, local…
The Ministry of Defence has pledged at least £2 billion of spending on new developments at the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), according to new information released in response to a Parliamentary Question from Caroline Lucas MP. The answer, which exposes the true scale of development at AWE, gives a breakdown of the costs for a number of new-build projects which are intended to keep the current Trident warhead in service and, if a future…
The lay person’s guide to REPPIR (Radiation Emergency Preparedness and Public Information Regulations), relating to AWE Aldermaston and Burghfield The principal radioactive materials utilised in the current design of UK nuclear warheads are Plutonium-239 (Pu-239) and highly enriched Uranium-235 (HEU-235). A single nuclear weapon produced by AWE is reckoned to contain several kilograms of Pu-239. At any time some part of the UK’s unsafeguarded stockpile of around 3.5 tonnes of weaponsgrade Pu-239 will be held on…
AWE plc is owned by a consortium of Jacobs Engineering Group, Lockheed Martin UK and Serco through AWE Management Ltd who hold a 25 year contract (until March 2025) to operate AWE. All AWE sites remain owned by the UK government who also hold a Golden Share in AWE plc. The company is based close to Aldermaston (although the nearest town is Tadley in Hampshire), with major facilities at Burghfield. AWE has two major sites, both based in Berkshire: AWE Aldermaston and AWE Burghfield. The company’s headquarters is AWE Aldermaston, which covers…
Trident is a submarine-launched inter-continental ballistic nuclear weapons system, which is currently carried by four Royal Navy Vanguard-class submarines. Trident is a US nuclear system. The US provides assistance to Britain with its nuclear programme under the 1958 US-UK Mutual Defence Agreement. The UK has access to 58 missiles from the US pool of Trident II D5 missiles. British Trident Submarines collect the missiles from the US Trident base at Kings Bay, Georgia in the South-East…
AWE Burghfield, a former munitions factory, occupies a 225 acre site between Aldermaston and Reading. It is responsible for the complex final assembly and maintenance of the warheads while in service, as well as their decommissioning. Unlike AWE Aldermaston with multiple entrances and exits, AWE Burghfield only has two gates. The main entrance gate is in The Mearings, off Reading Road, Burghfield. The second gate is on Burnthouse Lane. Nuclear Warhead and nuclear materials convoys…
AWE Aldermaston is the central facility of the British nuclear weapon establishment. It is officially located at Aldermaston, near Reading, in Berkshire, although the main entrances are in the nearby village of Tadley. This facility not only performs most research activities, it also develops weapon designs, and manufactures the majority of weapon components, including nuclear components. It was officially established 1 April 1950 on the site of a World War II airfield. Weapons development work…
Angie Zelter 18/8/12 It is pretty obvious to any sane person that threatening mass destruction by relying on a nuclear ‘defence’ policy by either possessing and deploying nuclear weapons or being part of a military alliance relying on nuclear weapons (like NATO) must be illegal as well as being immoral. And, you will be glad to know, that threatening to use a weapon that, even if used precisely against a purely military target, will have…
Replacing Trident will commit us to having nuclear weapons for 50 more years despite these important facts: The enormous cost • It will cost us at least £100 billion to procure and then maintain a new nuclear weapons system. • The current system already costs us at least £2 billion every year just to keep running. The majority of people are against nuclear weapons • Poll after poll show that the majority of British people are…
“Spending £100 billion on replacing Trident is a catastrophic folly. I’m sure I am one of many who support the those, like Action-AWE, who campaign actively and imaginatively against it”
– Ken Loach
WORLD IN CHAIINS
TRIDENT ON TRIAL
Nuclear weapons crime in the UK has been reported to Thames Valley Police.