18.5.15
Royal Navy whistleblower says Trident is "a disaster waiting to happen"
McNeil's report on WikiLeaks.
Original report in The Sunday Herald.
McNeilly's report alleges 30 safety and security flaws on Trident submarines, based at Faslane on the Clyde. They include failures in testing whether missiles could be safely launched, burning toilet rolls starting a fire in a missile compartment, and security passes and bags going unchecked.
He also reports alarms being muted because they went off so often, missile safety procedures being ignored and top secret information left unguarded.
The independent nuclear submarine expert, John Large, concluded McNeilly was credible, though he may have misunderstood some of the things he saw.(Regarding the quote from Large, I'm less sanguine. Ignoring alarms is a standard prelude to disaster. See Normal Accidents.)
Large said: "Even if he is right about the disorganisation, lack of morale, and sheer foolhardiness of the personnel around him - and the unreliability of the engineered systems - it is likely that the Trident system as a whole will tolerate the misdemeanours, as it's designed to do."
Second report in The National.
“We are so close to a nuclear disaster it is shocking, and yet everybody is accepting the risk to the public,” he warned. “It’s just a matter of time before we’re infiltrated by a psychopath or a terrorist.”Coverage in CommonSpace.
