by Keith Richmond
THE Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament has hit out at reports that the Government will shortly announce that Plymouth is to become Britain’s only “city centre” nuclear dump.
It is expected that when the Government reveals the results of its Maritime Change Programme, the dockyard at Devonport will, in exchange for the loss of frigates and active submarines, get a jobs “sweetener” in the form of cutting up the Royal Navy’s decommissioned and rusting nuclear-powered subs.
CND believes that dismantling highly radioactive submarine reactors just a few hundred yards from schools and homes is “an obscene risk which must not be allowed”.
If the leaks are correct, the reactors of the seven nuclear-powered subs already stored at Devonport, together with another seven in Scotland and those of submarines soon to leave active service, would be chopped up in the heart of a city of a quarter of a million people.
When the Ministry of Defence previously consulted Plymouth residents on the prospect of storing nuclear waste at Devonport as part of the Interim Storage of Laid Up Submarines project, the public overwhelmingly rejected the option.
CND chair Kate Hudson said: “Whatever safeguards are put in place, the fact that nuclear submarines and their reactors are to be broken up only a stone’s throw from schools and homes is a national disgrace. It is totally inappropriate to create a nuclear dumping ground in the middle of a city of 250,000 people which already suffers from high cancer levels.”
