Environment Secretary Richard Lochhead is to make a parliamentary statement about a radiation leak at a nuclear test reactor to voice concerns that Holyrood ministers were “kept in the dark” by the Ministry of Defence.
Mr Lochhead proposes to address the Scottish Parliament tomorrow about the incident at the UK Government’s Vulcan Nuclear Reactor Test Establishment at Dounreay, in Caithness.
UK Defence Secretary Philip Hammond revealed last week that Britain’s oldest nuclear submarine, HMS Vanguard, is to have its reactor refuelled at a cost of £120million after the test reactor was found to have a small internal leak of radiation.
He told the Commons the work was being carried out after “low levels of radioactivity were detected in a prototype core” in 2012.
Mr Hammond said the test reactor had been shut down after the fault was detected and both the independent Defence Nuclear Safety Regulator and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency had been informed.
Mr Lochhead was notified of the situation shortly before Mr Hammond’s statement.
Alex Salmond has already demanded an apology from the prime minister for failing to tell Scottish ministers about the problem. He said the UK Government had “disrespected” Holyrood and the people of Scotland by not alerting the Scottish Government to the issue for almost two years.
In his statement, Mr Lochhead plans to tell the Scottish Parliament of his concerns that the MoD informed both Sepa and the UK Office for Nuclear Regulation that the incident be kept on a strict need-to know basis, for security reasons. He will further voice concern that Mr Hammond informed the Commons that there had been no measurable change in radiation discharge, when the environment agencies reported that there was.
A newspaper yesterday claimed official figures showed the incident had triggered a tenfold rise in radioactive gas emissions.
Mr Lochhead said: “There must be complete openness and transparency on any nuclear- related incident of this nature. It is therefore totally unacceptable for the UK Government to keep the Scottish people, the Scottish Parliament and Scottish Government in the dark on the incident at Dounreay’s Vulcan establishment. It is important that the public and Scottish Parliament are kept informed and it is unacceptable for the Ministry of Defence to put Sepa in such a difficult position once they were eventually notified by asking them not to make information about this situation more widely known for security reasons.”
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