Radioactive water from Royal Navy nuclear base leaked into sea

Radioactive water from the base that holds the UK's nuclear bombs was allowed to leak into the sea after old pipes repeatedly burst, official files have revealed.

- Rob Edwards Severin Carrell

The radioactive material was released into Loch Long, a sea loch near Glasgow, because the Royal Navy failed to properly maintain a network of 1,500 water pipes on the base, a regulator found.

The armaments depot at Coulport on Loch Long is one of the most secure and secretive military sites in the UK. It holds the navy's nuclear warheads for its fleet of four Trident submarines, which are based nearby.

Files compiled by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa), a pollution watchdog, suggest that up to half the components at the base were beyond their design life when the leaks occurred.

Sepa said the flooding at Coulport had been caused by "shortfalls in maintenance", resulting in the release of "unnecessary radioactive waste" in the form of low levels of tritium, which is used in warheads.

In one report in 2022, the agency blamed the leaks on the navy's repeated failure to maintain the equipment in the area devoted to storing the warheads, and said plans to replace 1,500 old pipes at risk of bursting were "suboptimal".