Latest news with #decommissioned
Telegraph
10-08-2025
- Telegraph
A history of royal transport, from luxury trains to yachts and planes
It was in the early 1840s that Queen Victoria – a woman not least known for her exacting standards – made history, becoming the first British monarch to travel around the country aboard her very own train. Since then, members of the Royal family have dashed about the UK aboard several iterations of regal rolling stock – and, for that matter, around the globe on various other royal modes of transport, from the 'King's Flight' to the Royal Yacht Britannia. But all good things must, it seems, come to an end. Today, the royal train is the last official survivor of the royal transport fleet; and in March 2027, it was recently revealed, it too will be decommissioned, with senior royals instead making greater use of public trains and helicopters. It is the sad end of a glorious era of royal travel – but one whose significance can only be truly appreciated in the context of its earliest beginnings. The royal trains When the first royal train took to the tracks, it changed not only how the Royal family travelled, but its entire public perception, too. Before the British rail network had expanded sufficiently in the 1840s, the only modes of royal travel were by horse-drawn carriage or ship. With the very limited spread of public information available in those days, little attention was paid to royal travel, with the focus – if there was any – usually on the destination, where grand decorations and receptions would be the order of the day, rather than the journey. That all changed when Queen Victoria began traversing the country aboard her own train. From the 1840s onwards, Britain's rail network expanded rapidly, meaning that she was able to conduct more and more of her journeys by rail. Queen Victoria – the first monarch to recognise the importance of traversing the country and meeting the public – became more visible, and the public became increasingly fascinated. The lines benefitted too: when travelling between London and Scotland, Queen Victoria's preferred supplier was the London & North Western Railway (LNWR), who then – understandably – used this fact to market themselves as 'The Premier Line'. From its earliest beginnings, the train was housed at the railway works at Wolverton on the outskirts of Milton Keynes, the world's first 'railway town', built on a grid system to house workers – where the current version still resides today. In 1869, Queen Victoria commissioned her own set of train cars, day and night saloons lavishly painted with 23-carat-gold and blue silk details. The carriages were again built at Wolverton, at a cost of £1,800 – £800 of which the monarch contributed from her own purse, equivalent to £82,500 today. These new carriages were the heart of the long royal train, and – in a blatant PR exercise – the LNWR published postcards of them which were widely featured in the press: images of luxurious saloon interiors, otherwise only seen by royalty and staff, which created myth and mystique about its workings. When King Edward VII came to the throne in 1901, he requested a new royal train with all mod-cons – including cooking facilities, baths and telephones – for himself and Queen Alexandra. He instructed the LNWR that the interior should resemble the royal yacht of the day as closely as possible, and new postcards were duly published. During the First World War, King George V used the train so frequently that it became his temporary home, while the Second World War saw the very existence of the royal train become a closely guarded state secret. Wolverton-built armour-plating was fitted to the royal saloons, and the train was extensively used to boost public war morale with numerous visits across the rail network. Gradually, more technological advancements were added, including radio and telephones to create a mobile office; innovations which always eventually trickled down into ordinary public trains. After the formation of British Railways in 1948, individual regions continued to maintain the constituent railway companies' royal train carriages, until 1977, when Elizabeth II's silver jubilee demanded that a single royal train be constructed. The late Leo Coleman, a D-Day veteran who started at Wolverton in 1937, was asked to project manage the 1977 royal train construction scheme. In 2013, he told me that Elizabeth II, the Duke of Edinburgh and Sir Hugh Casson were heavily involved in the interior design, requesting a functional carriage interior rather than a luxurious one. It was to be a home from home where 'The Principles' (as the train's royal passengers are known) could, in Leo's words, 'Kick off their shoes, relax in their lounge, have a meal or go to their on-board office and be briefed for their next engagement.' 'The Principles did not want change,' explains Chris Hillyard, the final royal train foreman, who retired in 2013 after a lifetime at Wolverton and on the train. 'They knew how the train worked, [and] trusted the railway staff involved who carried out the train's operation to perfection. This is why it was the preferred method of travel for them.' The royal yachts It's tricky to pin down the first British iteration of a royal yacht – though there have, officially, been 83 designated as such since the Restoration in 1660. Was it Henry VIII's golden-sailed craft, for example; James I's Disdain – the first royal vessel intended purely for pleasure cruising, rather than battle; or those of Charles II, who was gifted the extravagant Mary by the Dutch on his ascension to the throne, establishing the owning of a yacht as a royal tradition? In its strictly modern sense, British royal yachts have been around for about the last 350 years – sometimes officially naval owned, sometimes privately owned – and have included the likes of HMY Alexandra, named for Edward VII's wife; the stately SS Gothic, used for Elizabeth II's 1954 tour of Australia; and, briefly in 1953, the RY Surprise. But the most famous is, of course, the 400ft Royal Yacht Britannia, built specifically for the royal household, launched in 1953, and decommissioned in 1997. Unlike the royal trains, royal yachts are designed not only for travel, but also for hosting state receptions and boosting the UK's presence and influence around the world – a role Britannia played with panache. During her tenure, she travelled more than one million nautical miles around the world, calling at more than 600 ports in 135 countries – hosting dignitaries, presidents, honeymooning royals and even, during the South Yemeni Crisis of 1986, 1,000 refugees. The interiors were – famously – grand, designed in the style of an elegant English country house, with floral sofas and antiques, a large state drawing room, a teak-clad sun deck, several sitting rooms and six bedrooms. The late Queen once described the yacht as 'the one place where I can truly relax', and was seen to shed tears during its decommissioning ceremony. The royal planes 'The King's Flight', as the fleet of aircraft used to transport members of the Royal family was known, was instituted in 1936 when King George VI became the first UK monarch to take to the air, flying from Sandringham to London to attend his Accession Council. It was the world's first air organisation dedicated to a head of state, and was subsumed into the RAF in 1942, then resurrected after the war and based at RAF Benson near Oxford, with five aircraft. Unlike rail and sea travel, the King and Queen always flew in different planes, each accompanied by Princess Elizabeth or Margaret, but never both. When Princess Elizabeth became queen in 1952, the fleet was renamed 'the Queen's Flight', with royal helicopters being added in 1958. The Duke of Edinburgh and Prince Charles qualified as pilots, often flying themselves to appointments. The Queen's Flight was disbanded in 1995, and again was subsumed in the RAF, combined with the royal air fleet of BAe 146 aircraft, which was used to fly members of the Royal family and other dignitaries for 39 years, until it was retired in March 2022. What's next for the royal train? The expectation at Wolverton was that the train would cease operations once King Charles stopped using it – though that time has arrived a little sooner than anticipated. Now comprising just seven carriages, the interiors of the current train are surprisingly sparse and practical, with an enduring 1970s aesthetic that feels somewhat corporate and increasingly dated; a far cry from the sumptuous carriages of Victoria's day. Before its official decommissioning, the train is likely to travel around the network on an emotional farewell tour in 2026 – after which, its fate remains as yet unknown. Nevertheless, with two of the Royal family's former vehicles now open to the public – the Royal Yacht Britannia in Edinburgh, and one of the BAe 146s at the Duxford Imperial War Museum near Cambridge – it's not unreasonable to hope that the royal train's seven remaining carriages might yet live out its golden years on display in Wolverton.
The Guardian
09-08-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
The lethal legacy of Aukus nuclear submarines will remain for millennia – and there's no plan to deal with it
In the cold deep waters of Rosyth Harbour lie the dormant hulks of Britain's decommissioned nuclear submarines. One of the shells lashed to the dock here is HMS Dreadnought, Britain's first nuclear-powered submarine. It was commissioned in 1963, retired in 1980, and has spent decades longer tied to a harbour than it ever did in service. The spent nuclear fuel removed from its reactor remains in temporary storage. For decades the UK has sought a solution to the nuclear waste its fleet of submarines generates. After decades of fruitless search there are 'ongoing discussions' but still no place for radioactive waste to be permanently stored. Similarly, in the US – the naval superpower which controls a vast landmass and which has run nuclear submarines since the 1950s – there is still no permanent storage for its submarines' nuclear waste. More than a hundred decommissioned radioactive reactors sit in an open-air pit in Washington state, on a former plutonium production site the state's government describes as 'one of the most contaminated nuclear sites in the world'. This is what becomes of nuclear-powered submarines at the end of their comparatively short life. A nuclear-powered submarine can expect a working life of three decades: the spent fuel of a submarine powered by highly enriched uranium can remain dangerously radioactive for millennia. Finland is building an underground waste repository to be sealed for 100,000 years. For Australia's proposed nuclear-powered submarine fleet there is, at present, nowhere for that radioactive spent fuel to go. As a non-nuclear country – and a party to the non-proliferation treaty – Australia has no history of, and no capacity for, managing high-level nuclear waste. But Australia is not alone: there is no operational site anywhere on Earth for the permanent storage of high-level nuclear waste. Documents released under freedom of information laws show that, beginning in the 2050s, each of Australia's decommissioned Aukus submarines will generate both intermediate- and high-level radioactive waste: a reactor compartment and components 'roughly the size of a four-wheel drive'; and spent nuclear fuel 'roughly the size of a small hatchback'. The Australian Submarine Agency says the exact amount of high-level waste Australia will be responsible for is 'classified'. Sign up: AU Breaking News email Because Australia's submarines will run on highly enriched uranium (as opposed to low enriched uranium – which can power a submarine but cannot be used in a warhead) the waste left behind is not only toxic for millennia, it is a significant proliferation risk: highly enriched uranium can be used to make weapons. The eight nuclear-powered submarines proposed for Australia's navy will require roughly four tonnes of highly enriched uranium to fuel their sealed reactor units: enough for about 160 nuclear warheads on some estimates. The spent fuel will require military-grade security to safeguard it. The problems raised by Australia's critics of Aukus are legion: the agreement's $368bn cost; the lopsided nature of the pact in favour of the US; sclerotic rates of shipbuilding in the US and the UK, raising concerns that Australia's nuclear submarines might never arrive; the loss of Australian sovereignty over those boats if they do arrive; the potential obsolescence of submarine warfare; and whether Aukus could make Australia a target in an Indo-Pacific conflict. All are grave concerns for a middle power whose security is now more tightly bound by Aukus to an increasingly unreliable 'great and powerful friend'. But the most intractable concern is what will happen to the nuclear waste. It is a problem that will outlive the concept of Australia as a nation-state, that will extend millennia beyond the comprehension of anybody reading these words, that will still be a problem when Australia no longer exists. And it cannot be exported. The Aukus agreement expressly states that dealing with the submarines' nuclear waste is solely Australia's responsibility. 'Australia shall be responsible for the management, disposition, storage, and disposal of any spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste … including radioactive waste generated through submarine operations, maintenance, decommissioning, and disposal,' Article IV, subclause D of the treaty states. As well, should anything go wrong, at any point, with Australia's nuclear submarines, the risk is all on Australia. 'Australia shall indemnify … the United States and the United Kingdom against any liability, loss, costs, damage or injury … resulting from Nuclear Risks connected with the design, manufacture, assembly, transfer, or utilization of any Material or Equipment, including Naval Nuclear Propulsion Plants,' subclause E states. ''Nuclear Risks',' the treaty states, 'means those risks attributable to the radioactive, toxic, explosive, or other hazardous properties of material.' An emeritus professor at Griffith University's school of environment and science, Ian Lowe, tells Guardian Australia that the government's regime for storing low-level nuclear waste is a 'shambles'. He says the government's 'decide and defend' model for choosing a permanent waste storage site has consistently failed. 'You currently have radioactive waste from Lucas Heights, from Fishermans Bend, and from nuclear medicine and research all around Australia, just stored in cupboards and filing cabinets and temporary sheds,' Lowe says. 'The commonwealth government has made three attempts to establish a national facility – it's a repository if you're in favour of it, it's a waste dump if you're opposed – and on every occasion there's been local opposition, particularly opposition from Indigenous landowners, and on each of those three occasions … the proposal has collapsed.' Most of Australia's low-level and intermediate nuclear waste – much of it short-lived medical waste – is stored at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation facility in Lucas Heights in outer Sydney. Lowe says the nuclear safety regulator, ARPANSA, does a commendable job in protecting the public but the facility was never intended to be permanent. Australia has been searching for a permanent site for nuclear waste for nearly three decades. Its approach – derided by Lowe as 'decide and defend': where government chooses a place to put radioactive waste and then defends the decision against community opposition – has failed in Woomera, in central South Australia, in the late 1990s, then Muckaty station in the Northern Territory, then on farmland near Kimba, again in SA. The federal court ruled against the Kimba plan in 2023, after a challenge from the traditional owners, the Barngarla people, who had been excluded from consultation. Lowe, the author of Long Half-Life: The Nuclear Industry in Australia, says the complexities and risks of storing high-level nuclear waste from a submarine are factors greater than the low- and intermediate-level waste Australia now manages. Sign up to Breaking News Australia Get the most important news as it breaks after newsletter promotion 'The waste from nuclear submarines is much nastier and much more intractable,' he says. 'And because they use weapons-grade highly enriched uranium there is the greater security issue of needing to make sure that not only do you need to protect against that waste irradiating people and the environment, you must also ensure that malevolent actors, who have in mind a malicious use of highly enriched uranium, can't get their hands on it.' Australia's decision to use highly enriched uranium to power its submarines, as opposed to low enriched uranium (reactors would need refuelling each decade), is a 'classic case of kicking the can down the road and creating a problem for future generations', Lowe argues. 'In the short term, it's better to have highly enriched uranium and a sealed reactor that you never need to maintain during the life of the submarine. But at the end of the life of the submarine, you have a much more serious problem.' The high-level nuclear waste from Australia's submarines will be hazardous for 'hundreds of thousands of years,' Lowe says. 'There are arguments about whether it's 300,000 or 500,000 or 700,000 years, but we're talking a period at least as long as humans have existed as an identifiably separate species. The time horizon for political decision makers is typically four or five years: the time horizon of what we're talking about is four or five hundred thousand years, so there's an obvious disconnect.' The US and the UK have run nuclear-powered (and nuclear-armed) submarines for decades. In the UK, 23 nuclear submarines have been decommissioned, none have been dismantled, 10 remained nuclear-fuelled. Most are sitting in water in docks in Scotland and on England's south-west coast. The first submarine to be disposed of – the cold war-era HMS Swiftsure was retired from service in 1992 – will be finally dismantled in 2026. Keeping decommissioned nuclear subs afloat and secure costs the UK upwards of £30m a year. There is still no site for permanent storage of their radioactive waste: there has been 'progress and ongoing discussions', the defence minister, Lord Coaker, told the House of Lords last year, but still no site. The UK has about 700,000 cubic metres of toxic waste, roughly the volume of 6,000 doubledecker buses. Much of it is stored at Sellafield in Cumbria, a site described by the Office for Nuclear Regulation says as 'one of the most complex and hazardous nuclear sites in the world'. In the US, contaminated reactors from more than 100 retired submarines are stored in 'Trench 94' – a massive open pit at the Hanford nuclear site in Washington state. Spent nuclear fuel is also sent to the Idaho National Laboratory and sites in South Carolina and Colorado. Hanford is designed to last 300 years but the site has a chequered history of pollution and radiation leaks. Washington state describes it as 'one of the most contaminated nuclear sites in the world'. Finland is the first country to devise a permanent solution. It is building an underground facility 450 metres below ground, buried in the bedrock of the island of Olkiluoto. The Onkalo – Finnish for cave or cavity – facility has taken more than 40 years to build (the site was chosen by government in 1983) and has cost €1bn. It is now undergoing trials. In March 2023 Australia's defence minister, Richard Marles, said high-level nuclear waste would be stored on 'defence land, current or future', raising the prospect that a site could be identified and then declared 'defence land'. A process for establishing a site would be publicly revealed 'within 12 months', he said. That process has not been announced nor a site identified. Australia will require a site for high-level nuclear waste from the 'early 2050s', according to the Australian Submarine Agency. Senate estimates heard last year that there have been no costings committed for the storage of spent fuel. And preparing a site for storing high-level radioactive waste for millennia will take decades. Guardian Australia sent a series of questions to Marles' office about the delayed process for selecting a site. A spokesperson for the Australian Submarine Agency responded, saying: 'The government is committed to the highest levels of nuclear stewardship, including the safe and secure disposal of waste. 'As the Government has said, the disposal of high-level radioactive waste won't be required until the 2050s, when Australia's first nuclear-powered submarine is expected to be decommissioned.' The spokesperson confirmed that Australia would be responsible for all of the spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste generated from the Aukus submarines: it would not have responsibility for intermediate- or high-level radioactive waste – including spent fuel – from the US, UK or any other country. No permanent storage site had been identified for low-level radioactive waste, which would include waste from foreign submarines. The government has consistently said it will engage extensively with industry, nuclear experts and affected communities to build a social licence for a permanent storage site. But Dave Sweeney of the Australian Conservation Foundation says he has seen little evidence of genuine effort to build social licence. The leaders who signed the Aukus deal – and those who continue to support it – have failed to comprehend the consequences beyond their political careers, he says. 'None of the leaders who announced Aukus are in power any more,' he tells the Guardian. 'One hundred thousand years from now, who knows what the world looks like, but Australia, whatever is here then, will still be dealing with the consequences of that high-level waste.' Sweeney says the 'opacity' of the decision-making around the Aukus agreement itself is compounded by fears that the deal could be only the beginning of a nuclear industry expansion in Australia. 'We see this as a Trojan horse to expanding, facilitating, empowering the nuclear industry, emboldening the nuclear industry everywhere,' he says. 'It is creepy, controversial, costly, contaminating, and leading to vastly decreased security and options for regional and global peace.' Beyond the astronomical cost of the submarine deal, its the true burden would be borne by innumerable future generations. 'We are talking thousands and thousands of years: it is an invisible pervasive pollutant and contaminant and the only thing that gets rid of it is time. And with the whole Aukus deal, that's what we're running out of.'
Yahoo
01-07-2025
- Yahoo
Royal Train's Final Stop: King Charles to Retire Iconic 'Palace on Wheels' Beloved by Queen Elizabeth After Cost Concerns
The Royal Household has revealed that the Royal Train will be decommissioned A summary of the Sovereign Grant Report 2024-2025 stated that the train will be retired before its contract expires in March 2027 Queen Elizabeth was known to be fond of the transport and reportedly saved it from being scrapped in 2017King Charles' office is screeching the Royal Train to a halt. On June 30, the Royal Household released the Sovereign Grant Report 2024-2025 and, in a key detail, revealed that the Royal Train will be decommissioned. The Sovereign Grant funds the royal family's official duties and maintenance of the occupied palaces, and its annual financial statement is full of details about how the royal family spends that money. A summary of the report stated that the Royal Train will be retired before its current contract expires in March 2027, "following a thorough review into its use and value for money." The Royal Train has been called "a palace on wheels" and hasn't been used much during King Charles' reign. In June 2018, Meghan Markle and Queen Elizabeth memorably rode the Royal Train to Cheshire for their first joint outing after the Duchess of Sussex married Prince Harry and embraced a full-time working royal role. The Royal Train was a favored travel option for Queen Elizabeth and other senior royals because it allowed them to relax and work en route. The royal transport featured nine burgundy carriages and was complete with an office, sleeping quarters and dining areas, creating a home away from home for royals on the go. In March, The Telegraph reported that the fate of the Royal Train was up in the air amid an ongoing review following Queen Elizabeth's death in September 2022, which sparked King Charles' accession to the throne. The outlet said that the locomotive operated by DB Cargo UK was "phenomenally costly to run," citing an example of how a two-day trip the King took to North Yorkshire in June 2023 cost $71,340. The King reportedly used the Royal Train to travel to the Midlands in March, taking it out for the first time since May 2024. Though the train runs on seriously sustainable hydro-treated vegetable oil, the outlet reported that the environmentally minded monarch used it just twice in 2023. The Royal Household's decision to retire the transport hints that the King is less sentimental about the Royal Train than his late mother, who The Telegraph said saved it from being scrapped in 2017. Heir to the throne Prince William has also taken public trains to travel to his engagements, recently surprising commuters in Wales with his wife, Kate Middleton, over the winter. The Sovereign Grant report summary, covering April 2024 to March 2025, also included several key updates — among them, the note that both King Charles and Princess Kate began phased returns to public duties during this period following their cancer diagnoses. Also included in the report were major updates on royal spending, engagements, and infrastructure. The total Sovereign Grant remained unchanged for the fourth consecutive year at $108.8 million, split between $65.3 million for core funding and $43.5 million for the ongoing Buckingham Palace refurbishment project. Supplementary income rose to $27.1 million, thanks in part to record visitor numbers at Buckingham Palace during the Summer Opening and exclusive tours of the newly refurbished East Wing, which drew over 10,700 guests. The royal family collectively undertook more than 1,900 public engagements in the U.K. and abroad, while over 93,000 people attended 828 official events across royal residences. Can't get enough of PEOPLE's Royals coverage? Sign up for our free Royals newsletter to get the latest updates on Kate Middleton, Meghan Markle and more! Work on Buckingham Palace continued at pace, with nearly 9 miles of new electrical cabling and more than 12 miles of mechanical pipework installed, along with accessibility upgrades including lifts and new lavatories. Reflecting on the year, Keeper of the Privy Purse James Chalmers, said: 'Soft power is hard to measure but its value is, I believe, now firmly understood at home and abroad, as the core themes of the new reign have come into even sharper focus, and the Royal Family have continued in their service to the nation, Realms and Commonwealth.' Read the original article on People
