Construction of £600m nuclear bomb facility placed on hold amid ‘corner-cutting, incompetence and ch
Categories: Articles:Nuclear Weapons |
Published: 09/03/2015 |
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CND has slammed the spiralling costs and ‘catastrophic’ errors during construction of the Ministry of Defence’s flagship nuclear weapons facility at the Atomic Weapons Establishment. Project Pegasus, a £634m project which will manufacture enriched uranium components for the UK’s nuclear warheads, is ‘in limbo’ after a catalogue of failings in the planning and construction stages.
•Flagship £634m nuclear warhead facility ‘in limbo’ after design problems, project management failures and regulatory setbacks
•MoD will now have to rely on a uranium facility built in the 1950s, which is ‘incapable of meeting future capability and regulatory requirements’
•Jacobs Engineering “mafia” which co-manages the project accused of lacking ‘the calibre or credentials to run major projects’
•Construction being overseen by ‘inadequately skilled personnel with no track record of delivery’
Despite a vote on Trident replacement not being due until 2016, spending at the AWE site has risen to around £1 billion a year to ensure the UK can make nuclear bombs well into the middle of this century. But this huge expenditure has not stopped a litany of errors in planning, management and construction of new nuclear facilities which has left the Office for Nuclear Regulation demanding answers.
A Freedom of Information request by the Nuclear Information Service, reported in the Sunday Herald today, has uncovered that the futures of Project Pegasus (£634m) and Project Mensa (a warhead assembly/disassembly facility costing upwards of £734m) are both in doubt after suffering from ‘poor planning at the outset, with unachievable budgets and delivery schedules.’
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