Latest news with #AtomicWeaponsEstablishment
Daily Mirror
22-06-2025
- Health
- Daily Mirror
Nuclear troops given unnecessary x-rays in Britain's first atomic bomb test
A hidden document has revealed that troops were given unnecessary x-rays on their way to take part in Britain's first atomic bomb test in the 1950s Troops were given potentially harmful x-rays in a secret biological monitoring programme as part of Cold War weapons tests. Hundreds of Royal Engineers were ordered to submit to the medical examinations without any clinical reason or benefit. The evidence has emerged from a medical officer's journal, hidden for decades at the Atomic Weapons Establishment behind top secret security classifications. Thousands of servicemen were subject to similar orders as Britain developed its nuclear arsenal over the decade that followed. Pam Hill, whose dad Jim Stephenson took part in Operation Hurricane in 1952, said: 'He was sent to do his duty and he did it. Afterwards he had serious gut problems, and 40 years of a severe lung disease which eventually killed him. Seven months are missing from his medical records. It was always on his mind that the whole lung thing was caused by being out at Montebello. If he had chest x-rays at the time, it might have answered all our questions.' Jim's lung condition, bronchiectasis, can be caused by radiation. His children have also suffered unexplained illness, with miscarriages, coeliac disease, and spinal issues. His teenaged grandson has almost no adult teeth. While the cancer risk of an x-ray is small, it increases if done repeatedly. It can be justified only if there is a therapeutic benefit - and for healthy troops already examined and found to be A1-fit, there was none. The Mirror 's three-year investigation of the Nuked Blood Scandal has already uncovered thousands of blood and urine tests given to troops, with the results withheld from their medical records. Now we can reveal there was a third and potentially-harmful form of monitoring, using x-rays. If men had damage as a result of inhaling radioactive particles, it could show up as dark shadows on their lungs. What happened to healthy people living amid fallout was unknown, but since 1947 human experiments have needed informed consent, full communication of the risks involved, and the right to withdraw. A consultant radiologist told the Mirror: 'There was a clear understanding at the time that radiation caused tumours. From a military standpoint you'd probably get ethical approval because it's an unknown and there were civil defence concerns. You would want to know what proportion later developed a problem, what the damage was, whether it rectified itself or led to longer term damage. There would always be a duty of care to the patients. 'To not keep those records long-term would be considered a massive breach of research protocol. There would be redress, and punitive fines. Perhaps more importantly for the veterans, someone would have looked at all these x-rays and made an assessment, written a report on the outcomes. Where is that now?' READ MORE: Video emerges of Defence Secretary saying nuke veterans scandal "shames us as a country" The medical journal covers the weeks shortly before Operation Hurricane in 1952, Britain's first nuclear bomb test, which detonated in the hull of an old warship off the Montebello Islands in Australia. Just over 200 Royal Engineers were ordered to join the fleet, to build jetties, camps and laboratories near Ground Zero. The journal states: 'They came aboard only a few hours before we sailed, and I did not discover until after that it is not a routine in the army to have the chest x-rayed at yearly intervals. Accordingly I had them all done at Royal Naval Hospital Malta.' The log was discovered on a top secret database at the Atomic Weapons Establishment, locked on the grounds of national security risks. Labour ministers have ordered the entire archive to be published, but have not commented on why it was a state secret, or why it is not one any more. The Ministry of Defence has spent decades denying it experimented on troops. Few survive from that first operation, and government studies have found they have increased risks of bladder, skin, stomach and 'unspecified' cancers. They also have elevated rates of suicide. Jim's former comrade, Dixie Kidd, 92, said: 'At one point after the bomb we were ordered on to shore to collect things the scientists had left behind, tins of food, raw vegetables. Others were picking up dead sea birds. After we left, I was in a contingent ordered to take readings from the things we had found, two hours on, two hours off. The numbers were to establish the radioactive half-life. 'On the way home, our pay books were taken off us and they put into each one we had been exposed to 5 rads of radiation. All of us the same. I wondered how that was possible, and why I never got ill when so many of my mates did.' Documents seen by the Mirror state that anyone with a dose over 5 rads could no longer be employed on the operation. A higher recorded dose may also have led to war pensions. Another ex-sapper, Eric Waterfield, from 71 Field Squadron, has seen his daughters suffer reproductive issues. He said: 'Three years after Hurricane, a surgeon found a growth in my lung. He said it was better in the bucket than in my chest, so he had it out, and that was the last I heard of it. If there were chest x-rays, it might explain things.' The bogus classification of information about the experiments is now the subject of a criminal complaint to the Met Police, which is considering further action. The missing medical records are being sought in a civil suit estimated to cost the MoD up to £5bn in aggravated damages. Campaign group LABRATS has asked the Prime Minister for a meeting to find a cheaper, quicker route to truth and justice, but has received no reply. Founder Alan Owen said: 'This biological monitoring was done to see what would happen to the British civilian population if attacked. Troops were the only people who could be ordered into fallout and told to stay there, under threat of a court martial. 'We have found veteran after veteran has medical records that are missing this vital data. Without it, medical diagnosis and treatment are harder and war pensions next to impossible. 'All we want is for the most mistreated veterans in British history to get a fair deal - to be heard, to get justice, and to get an apology.' A spokesman for the MoD said: 'The Minister for Veterans and People has commissioned officials to look into unresolved questions regarding medical records as a priority, and this is now underway. This work will enable us to better understand what information the department holds regarding medical testing of service personnel.'
Sky News
20-06-2025
- Politics
- Sky News
Inside Britain's largest nuclear weapons site - as scientists race to build a new warhead by the 2030s
Vaults of enriched uranium and plutonium to make nuclear bombs are dotted about a secure site in Berkshire along with Anglo-Saxon burial mounds and a couple of lakes. Surrounded by metal fences topped with barbed wire, much of the nuclear weapons facility at Aldermaston in Berkshire looks frozen in time from the 1950s rather than ready for war in the 21st century. But a renewed focus on the importance of the UK's nuclear deterrent means the government is giving much of its nuclear infrastructure a facelift as it races to build a new warhead by the 2030s when the old stock goes out of service. Sky News was among a group of news organisations given rare access to the largest of Britain's nuclear weapons locations run by AWE. The acronym stands for Atomic Weapons Establishment - but a member of staff organising the visit told me that the public body, which is owned by the Ministry of Defence, no longer attributes the letters that make up its name to those words. "We are just A, W, E," she said. She did not explain why. Perhaps it is to avoid making AWE's purpose so immediately obvious to anyone interested in applying for a job but not so keen on weapons of mass destruction. For the scientists and engineers, working here though, there seems to be a sense of genuine purpose as they develop and ensure the viability and credibility of the warheads at the heart of the UK's nuclear deterrent, this country's ultimate security guarantee. "It's nice to wake up every day and work on something that actually matters," said a 22-year-old apprentice called Chris. Sky News was asked not to publish his surname for security reasons. The workforce at AWE is expanding fast, with 1,500 new people joining over the past year. The organisation has some 9,500 employees in total, including about 7,000 at Aldermaston, where the warhead is developed and its component parts are manufactured. Designing and building a bomb is something the UK has not needed to do for decades - not since an international prohibition on testing nuclear weapons came into force in the 1990s. It means the new warhead, called Astrea, will not be detonated for real unless it is used - an outcome that would only ever happen in the most extreme of circumstances as explained in a new podcast series by Sky News and Tortoise called The Wargame. The last time, Britain test-fired a bomb was at a facility in Nevada in the US in 1991. With that no longer an option, the scientists at AWE must rely on old data and new technology as they build the next generation of warhead. This includes input from a supercomputer at the Aldermaston site that uses 17 megawatts of power and crunches four trillion calculations per second. Another major help is a giant laser facility. It is built in a hall, with two banks of long cylinders, lying horizontal and stacked one of top of the other running down the length of the room - these are part of the laser. The beams are then zapped in a special, separate chamber, onto tiny samples of material to see how they react under the kind of extreme pressures and temperatures that would be caused in a nuclear explosion. The heat is up to 10 million degrees - the same as the outer edge of the sun. "You take all those beams at a billionth of a second, bring them altogether and heat a small target to those temperatures and pressures," one scientist said, as he explained the process to John Healey, the defence secretary, who visited the site on Thursday. Looking impressed, Mr Healey replied: "For a non-scientist that is hard to follow let alone comprehend." The Orion laser facility is the only one of its kind in the world, though the US - which has a uniquely close relationship with the UK over their nuclear weapons - has similar capabilities. Maria Dawes, the director of science at AWE, said there is a sense of urgency at the organisation about the need to develop and then build the new bomb - which is a central part of the government's new defence review published in early June. "You've probably read the strategic defence review," she said. "There's very much the rhetoric of this is a new era of threat and therefore it's a new era for defence and AWE is absolutely at the heart of that and so a sense of urgency around: we need to step up and we need to make sure that we've got what our customer needs. Yes, there's very much that sense here." It means an organisation that has for years been purely focused on ensuring the current stockpile of warheads is safe and works must shift to becoming more dynamic as it pursues a project that will be used to defend the UK long into the future. In a sign of its importance, the government is spending £15bn over the next four years alone on the programme to build the new warheads. Part of the investment is going into revamping Aldermaston. Driving around the 700-acre site, which was once a Second World War airbase, many of the buildings were constructed into the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. The construction of new science and research laboratories is taking place. But bringing builders onto one of the UK's most secure nuclear sites is not without risk. Everyone involved must be a British national and armed police patrols are everywhere. No one would say what will be different about the new bomb that is being developed here compared with the version that needs replacing. One official simply said the incumbent stock has a finite design life and will need to be swapped out.
Yahoo
20-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Inside Britain's largest nuclear weapons site - as scientists race to build a new warhead by the 2030s
Vaults of enriched uranium and plutonium to make nuclear bombs are dotted about a secure site in Berkshire along with Anglo-Saxon burial mounds and a couple of lakes. Surrounded by metal fences topped with barbed wire, much of the nuclear weapons facility at Aldermaston in Berkshire looks frozen in time from the 1950s rather than ready for war in the 21st century. But a renewed focus on the importance of the UK's nuclear deterrent means the government is giving much of its nuclear infrastructure a facelift as it races to build a new warhead by the 2030s when the old stock goes out of service. Sky News was among a group of news organisations given rare access to the largest of Britain's nuclear weapons locations run by AWE. The acronym stands for Atomic Weapons Establishment - but a member of staff organising the visit told me that the public body, which is owned by the Ministry of Defence, no longer attributes the letters that make up its name to those words. "We are just A, W, E," she said. She did not explain why. Perhaps it is to avoid making AWE's purpose so immediately obvious to anyone interested in applying for a job but not so keen on weapons of mass destruction. For the scientists and engineers, working here though, there seems to be a sense of genuine purpose as they develop and ensure the viability and credibility of the warheads at the heart of the UK's nuclear deterrent, this country's ultimate security guarantee. "It's nice to wake up every day and work on something that actually matters," said a 22-year-old apprentice called Chris. Sky News was asked not to publish his surname for security reasons. The workforce at AWE is expanding fast, with 1,500 new people joining over the past year. The organisation has some 9,500 employees in total, including about 7,000 at Aldermaston, where the warhead is developed and its component parts are manufactured. Designing and building a bomb is something the UK has not needed to do for decades - not since an international prohibition on testing nuclear weapons came into force in the 1990s. It means the new warhead, called Astrea, will not be detonated for real unless it is used - an outcome that would only ever happen in the most extreme of circumstances . The last time, Britain test-fired a bomb was at a facility in Nevada in the US in 1991. With that no longer an option, the scientists at AWE must rely on old data and new technology as they build the next generation of warhead. This includes input from a supercomputer at the Aldermaston site that uses 17 megawatts of power and crunches four trillion calculations per second. Another major help is a giant laser facility. It is built in a hall, with two banks of long cylinders, lying horizontal and stacked one of top of the other running down the length of the room - these are part of the laser. The beams are then zapped in a special, separate chamber, onto tiny samples of material to see how they react under the kind of extreme pressures and temperatures that would be caused in a nuclear explosion. The heat is up to 10 million degrees - the same as the outer edge of the sun. "You take all those beams at a billionth of a second, bring them altogether and heat a small target to those temperatures and pressures," one scientist said, as he explained the process to John Healey, the defence secretary, who visited the site on Thursday. Looking impressed, Mr Healey replied: "For a non-scientist that is hard to follow let alone comprehend." The Orion laser facility is the only one of its kind in the world, though the US - which has a uniquely close relationship with the UK over their nuclear weapons - has similar capabilities. Maria Dawes, the director of science at AWE, said there is a sense of urgency at the organisation about the need to develop and then build the new bomb - which is a central part of the government's new defence review published in early June. "You've probably read the strategic defence review," she said. "There's very much the rhetoric of this is a new era of threat and therefore it's a new era for defence and AWE is absolutely at the heart of that and so a sense of urgency around: we need to step up and we need to make sure that we've got what our customer needs. Yes, there's very much that sense here." It means an organisation that has for years been purely focused on ensuring the current stockpile of warheads is safe and works must shift to becoming more dynamic as it pursues a project that will be used to defend the UK long into the future. In a sign of its importance, the government is spending £15bn over the next four years alone on the programme to build the new warheads. Part of the investment is going into revamping Aldermaston. Driving around the 700-acre site, which was once a Second World War airbase, many of the buildings were constructed into the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. The construction of new science and research laboratories is taking place. But bringing builders onto one of the UK's most secure nuclear sites is not without risk. Everyone involved must be a British national and armed police patrols are everywhere. No one would say what will be different about the new bomb that is being developed here compared with the version that needs replacing. One official simply said the incumbent stock has a finite design life and will need to be swapped out.
Yahoo
09-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
People urged to sign up for nuclear site alerts
People living near an atomic weapons site are being invited to sign up to emergency text alerts so they can be notified in the event of a radiation emergency. West Berkshire Council said people affected by the Detailed Emergency Planning Zones (DEPZ) around the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) sites in Aldermaston or Burghfield, Berkshire, could sign up for the new service. The authority said the likelihood of an emergency that could impact the public was "extremely low". But it added that it was "essential" to have a quick way to share information if needed. The message alerts will provide instructions on what to do in the event of an emergency, the council said. Currently people in the DEPZ would be notified via landline, but the new system will ensure people would be notified wherever they were, and regardless of whether they had a landline. Details of how to sign up are on the West Berkshire Council website. The scheme is separate from the government emergency alerts. You can follow BBC Berkshire on Facebook, and X. AWE Aldermaston: 9,000 jobs safe after investment Atomic weapons site ordered to improve procedures Atomic weapons facility offers apprenticeships AWE West Berkshire Council
Daily Mail
02-06-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Nuclear-powered submarines, F35A fighter jets, a 'more lethal' army by 2035, and AI: How Starmer will spend billions to beef up Britain's defences to make country 'war-ready'
More submarines, soldiers and drones, along with an airborne nuclear strike capability and the exploration of technologies such as lasers, AI and robotics, are among the proposals in the Strategic Defence Review. These are the key ambitions outlined in the SDR: Army to be 'ten times more lethal' This ambition relies on the harnessing of new technologies and weapon systems, particularly drones. Lethality is difficult to measure and the claim is strong on political rhetoric. Only a couple of months ago, the Chief of the Defence Staff, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, said the ambition was to double lethality by 2027 and triple it by 2030. The new Archer artillery system, the belated introduction of the Ajax vehicle and Challenger 3 tanks will increase lethality… but to what extent? Three forces to be integrated into one The Integrated Force, unveiled as part of the SDR, is not a merger of the Armed Forces, but they will lose much of the traditional independence as they are moulded into a centralised Integrated Force. The SDR suggested the services were 'siloed'. The need for them to train together and prepare for war shoulder to shoulder was essential in the months and years ahead. £15billion boost for nuclear warheads Britain's nuclear deterrent has long been in need of recapitalisation. The £15billion will pay for these weapons to be upgraded or replaced. It will also see the significant modernisation of infrastructure at the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston, supporting more than 9,000 jobs at the Berkshire site. Up to 12 new nuclear attack submarines The as yet uncosted pledge to develop 'up to' 12 new attack submarines has been welcomed by military observers but the first boat is not expected to enter service before the late 2030s. The submarines will support the AUKUS security alliance between the UK, Australia and the United States and will be used to protect the Pacific from Chinese aggression. Over the decades ahead, the boats will replace the Royal Navy's current fleet of seven Astute-class submarines. They will be built at key sites such as BAE in Barrow-in-Furness. Six new factories to make munitions The SDR proposes at least six factories making munitions and energetics such as explosives and propellants for weapons. The SDR recommends creating an 'always on' munitions production capacity in the UK, allowing production to be scaled up at speed if needed. Britain's military warehouses are bare after £5billion in weaponry and munitions was provided for Ukraine since the start of the conflict in 2022. The programme will create more than 1,000 skilled jobs, according to the SDR. Robotics, cyber warfare and AI The review says AI will improve the quality and speed of decision-making and operational effectiveness for Britain's military, its allies… and its enemies. It should be an immediate priority to 'shift towards greater use of autonomy and AI within the UK's conventional forces'. This has shown to be transformational in Ukraine. Chiefs will launch a Defence AI Investment Fund by February 2026. The report warns cyber threats will become harder to mitigate as technology evolves, with government departments, military hardware, communications, increasingly vulnerable. Hardening critical defence functions to cyber-attack is crucial. Directed Energy Weapon systems, such as the UK's DragonFire, a world-leading laser ground to air system being developed at Porton Down, Wiltshire, can save millions of pounds in expenditure on ordnance systems. The review also calls for the MoD to seize the opportunities presented by technologies such as robots and lasers. £4billion expansion of the drone force The Government unveiled a £4billion investment package for drones and autonomous systems. Drones are dominating the conflict in Ukraine and in Russia, following the audacious Ukrainian attack on Russian airfields in Siberia just days ago. They provide proved lethality at minimal financial cost and would spare the lives of British troops because they are not required to engage with the enemy at close proximity. Cheap to produce drones can be effective against 'legacy' military systems worth billions of pounds and are necessary to protect and augment the UK's manned military systems, such as aircraft, helicopters and armoured vehicles. Fighter jets to carry nuclear bombs Britain is exploring the potential return of air-delivered nuclear weapons in collaboration with the United States. America's F-35A Lightning II aircraft is capable of carrying tactical gravity nuclear bombs. The proposal marks the most significant shift in UK nuclear posture since the Cold War. Currently, this country's nuclear deterrent is carried by the Royal Navy's 'bomber' submarines. The air-launched nuclear weapons would carry a much smaller payload. The lower yield B61 munitions are already integrated into US aircraft stationed on continental Europe and could be brought to Britain. Thousands of new long-range weapons At least 7,000 long-range weapons will be made to restock UK military warehouses and to prepare for an extended conflict against an adversary such as Russia. Children taught value of the military Defence chiefs will work with the Department for Education to develop understanding of the Armed Forces among young people in schools, by means of a two-year series of public outreach events across the UK, explaining current threats and future trends. Schools and community-based cadet forces will also be expanded, with an ambition of a 30 per cent rise by 2030 with a view to the UK having 250,000 cadets, many of whom will then go on to join the armed forces. More reservists and investment in them To meet the challenge of engaging in a lengthy conflict, the report identified the need to boost the number of reservists. These part-time personnel, many of whom are former regulars with operational experience, would join full-time troops on the frontline. The report identified the need to increase the size of the UK's Active Reserve forces by at least 20 per cent 'when funding allows, most likely in the 2030s'. The UK has around 25,000 Army reservists, 3,500 Royal Navy and Royal Marines reservists and 3,200 RAF reservists.
