Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how many nuclear safety events there have been at (a) Coulport and (b) Faslane in each of the last three years.
The table below provides the number of Nuclear Site Event Reports (NSERs) at Coulport and Faslane recorded for 2018, 2019 and 2020. These are shown according to their categorisation using criteria agreed locally in 2015.
Nuclear Site Events - 2018 | Category A | Category B | Category C | Category D | Below Scale |
Coulport | 0 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 16 |
Faslane | 0 | 0 | 6 | 23 | 86 |
Nuclear Site Events - 2019 | Category A | Category B | Category C | Category D | Below Scale |
Coulport | 0 | 0 | 1 | 4 | 13 |
Faslane | 0 | 1 | 5 | 46 | 88 |
Nuclear Site Events - 2020 | Category A | Category B | Category C | Category D | Below Scale |
Coulport | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 26 |
Faslane | 0 | 0 | 1 | 26 | 96 |
In line with industry good practice, and in common with other defence and civil nuclear sites, Her Majesty’s Naval Base Clyde has a well-established system for raising NSERs and investigating and categorising them according to their safety significance, whether equipment failures, human error, procedural failings, documentation shortcomings or near-misses.
The safety significance of all reported events remains low and they are all below Level 1, the lowest level of the seven-point International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES).
None of the events caused harm to the health of any member of staff at the Naval Base or to any member of the public, and no event resulted in any unauthorised discharge of radioactive waste to the environment.