Does having 200+ nuclear warheads an hour’s drive away from Scotland’s most populous city make you feel safe?
Do you think that radioactive leakages into Scottish waters are an acceptable price to pay just so that the UK can threaten the world with omnicide?
We don’t.
It’s been a dramatic week of nuclear news in Scotland, with concerning revelations about radioactive risk incidents at the UK military’s nuclear facilities on Scotland’s West Coast. Just yesterday The Herald reported that the highest category of nuclear risk occurred at Faslane in the first months of this year. Investigative outlet The Ferret has already recently reported a rise in risk incidents at Faslane in recent years.
Furthermore, a bombshell investigation by The Ferret investigative journalist Rob Edwards, also published in The Guardian, revealed that radioactive waste from the nuclear bomb depot at Coulport had contaminated Loch Long in 2019. The pollution occurred because the Royal Navy failed to properly maintain 1,500 pipes. Two years later insufficient action had been taken and more pipes burst in an area involving radioactivity.
These revelations come only after the Scottish information commissioner ruled that there was no national security basis for keeping such incidents secret, ordering SEPA to release files relating to poor maintenance at the Royal Navy’s nuclear facilities. Scottish MSPs have called on the UK government to investigate the incident, although the Scottish government is yet to announce measures in response to the radioactive pollution news.
If ever there was a reason that nuclear weapons are a Scottish election issue, this is it: they are an environmental hazard to our land, water and people, and Scottish politicians must be pressed to take a stand against them.
These revelations raise many urgent questions, not least regarding the MoD’s impunity from environmental rules. Whilst defence policy is reserved to Westminster, SEPA’s remit and responsibility is to protect Scotland’s environment and inform the Scottish public about environmental risks. SEPA cannot penalise the MoD for pollution incidents but surely making these known to the public is more likely to protect us than keeping MOD incompetence secret.
The UK military’s impunity from regulatory oversight in Scotland is serious cause for concern. Scotland’s public institutions including our parliament must demand accountability when the MoD is responsible for polluting our land and waters.
Of course, the broader issue raised by this scandal is nuclear weapons – namely the question: what ‘good’ could they possibly serve in return for their immense and rising costs?
Consider the irony: the mainstream propaganda about the UK’s nuclear weapons is that they are necessary to “keep us safe”. Yet the MoD, which manages the nuclear bombs, kept information about radioactive pollution of a popular Loch secret from the Scottish public.
What this shows is that it is not the nuclear weapons that “protect” Scotland – in fact the dynamic is quite the contrary. It is the nuclear weapons which are being “protected” by the MoD (with limitless funding, with regulatory exemptions, with FOI exemptions), at the expense of the Scottish public’s safety.
The Coulport and Faslane radiation revelations highlight something that is vital to understand about the nuclear threat: it is not only a prospective threat of catastrophic nuclear war that they pose to us. Nuclear weapons also pose daily risks, and cause ongoing harms: through pollution, through uranium mining worldwide, through risks of accidents and sabotage, and of course through the immense resources they command.
For those of you who have not already, join our campaign to rid nuclear weapons from Scotland, and fight for a better future for this country and the world: https://www.scottishcnd.org/