KEVIN McKenna made some excellent points in his article “Brigadier Wallace and his delusion over Russia and independence” (Oct 27). In particular, everyone should adopt his suggested terminology of “nuclear threat” to replace “nuclear deterrent”. Mr McKenna is right that this latter term “was coined by apologists of mass destruction to justify spending billions on them.”
It is seldom that any Tory or Unionist politician (yes, that includes you, Scottish Labour) mentions the nuclear weapons based in Scotland without using the term “deterrent”. This is a positively loaded word, with reassuring implications of defence and balance. Indeed, that term has become so pervasive that even politicians who should, and often do, know better, succumb to using it.
Former Tory defence minister Michael Portillo said that Trident does not constitute a deterrent to any nation or organisation we would regard as a threat. It is a status symbol, a vestige of Britain’s imperial power and part of the reason the UK still has a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
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The UK has a Trident arsenal of 200 warheads, each more than six times more powerful than the weapon unleashed on Hiroshima. One submarine typically carries around 40 such warheads, with this total payload being enough to literally wipe out human and most other life on Earth.
Incredibly, the Tories have committed to increase our destructive capability by a further 40 warheads, in contravention of the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty to which the UK is a signatory. Trident is a first-strike weapon of mass destruction, effective against civilian populations in large cities. That is the threat it presents. “If you attack us, you better think about what we can do to you”.
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“Nuclear threat” deserves general adoption because it not only applies to deployment of these WMDs, but also to the real and ever-present danger of accident, terror and cyber attack that could render much of Scotland uninhabitable. Faslane and Coulport have atrocious safety records, so much so that they stopped publishing annual reports. Only through an FOI request by Deidre Brock MP do we know that there were SIX “radioactive incidents” per MONTH between 2014 and 2017. There are also continuing issues with staffing, discipline and security on the bases.
An independent Scotland can sign and ratify the UN Treaty for Prevention of Nuclear Weapons and have these weapons deactivated and removed. Everyone in Scotland will be immediately more (not less) secure. And to those who cry “The jobs! The jobs!” (yes, this is you, Jackie Baillie) – be assured Scotland will still need the Faslane deep-water naval base, for genuine coastal, fisheries and energy installations security. Not only that, but senior defence jobs will be based here in Scotland, not 400 miles away.
Dr Ron Dickinson
Glasgow
I WOULD like to commend Kevin McKenna’s excellent article in Wednesday’s National. Full of wit and insight, I enjoyed it immensely. Of course, the idea that rUK would deliberately withhold security intelligence from its nearest neighbour, the only one with a land border, is laugh-out-loud absurd. It’s a stupid threat to make and only highlights how weak the Unionist arguments are becoming.
Robert Fletcher
Clackmannanshire
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BRITISH Nuclear Fuels Limited? Remember them? Founded 1971 and gone by 2010. Why? Couldn’t they make nuclear energy profitable?
The UK Atomic Energy Authority, formed in 1954, split into three in 1971 and BNFL became one of those offshoots. UKAEA left with research activities but helped create the Nuclear Industry Radioactive Waste Executive (Nirex) in 1982, and what a wonderful job they have done in developing and operating radioactive waste disposal facilities!
(The ownership of Nirex transferred from the nuclear industry to the UK Government departments DEFRA and DTI in 2005, then to UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority in November 2006 and by 2007 Nirex ceased trading as a separate entity.)
The 1986 Atomic Energy Authority Act requires UKAEA to act as if it is a commercial, self-financing enterprise, leading to another split in 1995. More commercial parts transferred to AEA Technology, floated on the stock exchange a year later. Somebody must be making a profit somewhere.
2008 needed a “major restructuring to meet decommissioning obligations” so we got a new subsidiary, UKAEA Limited, which was then sold to Babcock International Group in 2009. In the same year, Culham Centre for Fusion Energy was launched as the new name for UK fusion research.
In all those “restructuring” years, electricity costs have increased.
So is fusion the new miracle when fission didn’t quite make the grade for cheap fuel? Please let legislators read “Fusion reactors: not what they’re cracked up to be” by Daniel Jassby (who worked for 25 years at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab). It may give them pause for thought.
And perhaps The National might like to ask him for a comment?
Jane Guz
Dundee
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