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 government so decides, allow the development of a new warhead in years to come.

Significant safety problems have been exposed in the Ministry of Defence (MoD) response to an accident involving nuclear weapons after an emergency exercise in East Anglia last year.

Had the exercise been a real emergency, civilian emergency personnel would have been placed at risk from explosions and radioactive contamination as a result of misunderstandings about key safety information because a specialist MoD nuclear emergency response team “did not emphasise the hazards adequately” and gave “insufficient priority” to liaison with emergency services, according to official post-exercise reports.

Significant safety problems have been exposed in the Ministry of Defence (MoD) response to an accident involving nuclear weapons after an emergency exercise in East Anglia last year.

Had the exercise been a real emergency, civilian emergency personnel would have been placed at risk from explosions and radioactive contamination as a result of misunderstandings about key safety information because a specialist MoD nuclear emergency response team “did not emphasise the hazards adequately” and gave “insufficient priority” to liaison with emergency services, according to official post-exercise reports.