Old pipes cause radioactive leak at Scotland’s nuclear weapons facility

Radioactive water containing low levels of tritium was allowed to leak into Loch Long, a sea loch near Glasgow, Scotland, after ageing pipes repeatedly burst at the UK’s nuclear weapons base, official documents have revealed.

The Coulport armaments depot, one of Britain’s most secure and secretive military sites, stores nuclear warheads for the Royal Navy’s Trident submarine fleet, Caliber.Az reports, citing foreign media.

However, a regulator found that inadequate maintenance of a 1,500-pipe water network led to multiple leaks.

Files from the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) indicate that up to half of the base’s infrastructure components were beyond their design lifespan when the incidents occurred.

Sepa attributed the flooding and leaks to “shortfalls in maintenance,” resulting in the release of “unnecessary radioactive waste.” Tritium, a radioactive isotope used in nuclear warheads, was detected in the discharged water.

By Khagan Isayev