Nuclear convoy disaster exercise reveals weaknesses in emergency response

An emergency exercise has exposed serious weaknesses in Britain's ability to cope with a catastrophic motorway pileup in which a nuclear bomb convoy burns and spreads a cloud of radioactive contamination over nearby communities.

An internal report released by the Ministry of Defence reveals that the emergency services faced "major difficulties" in responding to the mocked-up accident near Glasgow because they had no help from MoD weapons experts for more than five hours.

At times the response, which involved 21 agencies, was disorganised, the report says. Heated disputes with ambulance staff over how to handle casualties contaminated with radioactivity at the crash site caused "considerable delay", resulting in one victim being declared dead.

Other problems included outdated, paper-based communications systems, poor mobile phone signals, conflicting scientific advice on health hazards and confusion over radiation monitoring.

Nuclear weapons are transported in heavily guarded road convoys up to six times a year between bomb factories at Aldermaston and Burghfield in Berkshire and the Royal Naval Armaments Depot at Coulport on Loch Long in Argyll. The trips are needed to ensure that Britain's stockpile of about 200 Trident missile warheads is properly maintained.

Every three years, the MoD conducts an exercise to test responses to a serious road accident. The last one, codenamed Exercise Senator 2011, took place on 13-15 September two years ago and involved more than 1,000 people and 21 public agencies, including the police, fire and ambulance services, local authorities, the Scottish government and the Cabinet Office.

The official review of the exercise, released under the Freedom of Information Act, says the accident scenario, described as "a series of catastrophic, highly improbable events", envisages a large goods lorry suffering an offside front tyre blowout while travelling north on the M74, near junction five at Bellshill to the south of Glasgow.

The lorry crashes through the central reservation and into one of three nuclear weapons carriers heading south. The weapons carrier swerves and topples over, fuel bursts into flames and plutonium and uranium leak from damaged warheads. A second weapons carrier has to take evasive action and is involved in a collision with a lorry. Up to 100 people are contaminated with radioactivity from the simulated accident, seven suffer serious injuries and two are killed. The exercise was carried out in a field near HMS Gannet, a Royal Navy search and rescue base at Glasgow Prestwick airport, with co-ordination centres in East Kilbride, Glasgow, London, Bristol and Aldermaston.

The most serious problem identified by the MoD's Defence Nuclear Safety Regulator was the time it took for experts on the MoD's military co-ordinating authority to get from their base at Abbey Wood in Bristol to the police's emergency control centre in East Kilbride. They did not arrive until five and a half hours after the accident had taken place.

"This lack of support created major difficulties for the multi-agency response, which struggled to attain a meaningful understanding of the issues," said the regulator's report. The absence of MoD expertise "over such an extended and critical period was not acceptable".

The report also highlighted the refusal of the Scottish Ambulance Service to transport two seriously injured people to hospital because they were contaminated with radioactivity. Royal Marines and MoD police decided to take them in military vehicles. "There were periods when the response became disorganised, and it was less than clear who was in charge at the scene," said the regulator. Discussions with ambulance staff "resulted in considerable delay in developing a plan to manage the [contaminated] casualties".

Further delays in sending in paramedics to retrieve radioactive casualties were "escalated" to incident commanders "but without adequate resolution". A footnote added: "Another serious casualty was declared dead due to the extended delay."A second report on Exercise Senator 2011 produced with the help of all the agencies involved lists additional problems. There was concern over poor mobile phone coverage and the fact that the first written notification of the accident received by the police was by fax. The use of paper to pass on vital messages at the police's East Kilbride control centre was "not fit for purpose and exposes the force and other agencies to criticism and potential reputation damage", said the report.

Despite the problems, the MoD insisted that the exercise had successfully demonstrated its ability to cope in an emergency. "Some improvements were identified to further enhance procedures and these have since been addressed," said a spokesman.

The MoD reports, along with a short video from the exercise, were obtained by the Nuclear Information Service, which monitors weapons activities. "This exercise shows that, at the height of the crisis, Scotland or remote parts of the UK would be left to fend for themselves by Whitehall in the event of an emergency involving a British nuclear weapon," said its director, Peter Burt.

Angus Robertson MP, the Scottish Nationalist defence spokesman at Westminster, questioned why the MoD had to send a team from Bristol when there was meant to be expertise at the Clyde naval bases. "It simply beggars belief, defies all common sense and makes sobering reading," he said.

A Glasgow Labour councillor, Bill Butler, who chairs the nuclear-free local authorities group in Scotland, said the exercise rang alarm bells. "I urge the MoD to take the outcomes of this exercise very seriously and work more closely with local authorities and the emergency services to resolve these planning gaps," he said.