The costs of some of the most expensive and controversial military procurement programmes are to remain shrouded in secrecy despite a government promise to disclose spending on all contracts valued over £25,000.

High cost, high risk projects such as the programme for replacing Trident nuclear weapons and construction of the Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers – already nearly £2 billion over budget - have been declared exempt from a government pledge to disclose spending on all contracts by the Cabinet Office at the request of the Ministry of Defence. ... more

The safety of the MoD's nuclear programmes is under threat in the medium term from a lack of finance and suitably competent staff, according to the Defence Nuclear Environment and Safety Board (DNESB), which oversees nuclear and radiological safety and environmental protection in the MoD. ... more

An official annual report has found “significant weaknesses” in the Ministry of Defence's safety performance and plots a deteriorating trend in military safety.

The 2010 report of the Defence and Environment Safety Board – the MoD's senior environment and safety panel which reports to Ministers on safety matters - found that there had been “little evidence of improvement since last year”, with a “lack of real progress” and “potential for degradation from numerous change programmes”. ... more

The Health and Safety Executive's Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) has completed an interim assessment of the implications of the Fukushima nuclear emergency in Japan and concluded that the UK nuclear industry can learn a number of lessons from the incident, although the current operations of UK nuclear plants need not be curtailed. ... more

 

Defence Secretary Liam Fox has announced that approval has been given to go ahead with the detailed design phase of development of new submarines planned to replace the current Vanguard class vessels which carry the UK's Trident nuclear weapons. ... more

 

Nuclear Information Service has written to the government expressing alarm at proposals to convert the United Kingdom's stockpile of plutonium into nuclear reactor fuel.

NIS has written in response to consultation by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) on the long-term management of the UK's unwanted plutonium stocks in which the government expresses a 'preliminary view' that the nation's civil plutonium stocks should be  converted into mixed oxide reactor fuel.

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Nuclear Information Service is calling for the Royal Navy's nuclear propulsion programme to be included within the scope of the Health and Safety Executive's review of the UK nuclear industry following the Fukushima nuclear accident.

The UK's nuclear submarines are powered by pressurised water reactors (PWR) but, according to an official report, the Navy's nuclear reactor programme “currently falls short of current relevant good practice.  

NIS has written to Mike Weightman, HM Chief Inspector of Nuclear Installations, to point out that the Navy's nuclear programme is probably an area of higher risk than the civil nuclear sector yet receives far less scrutiny of its operations, and asking for it to be included in the review to learn lessons from the Fukushima accident which the government has requested. ... more