Coronavirus posing a safety threat to Britain’s nuclear facilities
NFLA 20th March 2020, The unprecedented public health crisis that is associated with the global outbreak and spread of coronavirus is affecting all communities across the UK and Ireland. NFLA has specific concerns around its impact on the sensitive nuclear sector. In the past few days, the Sellafield site has announced that its Magnox reprocessing site operations will be suspended after workers on the facility tested positive for coronavirus.
A Daily Mail report has also suggested there could be as many as 20 positive cases of
coronavirus on the HM Nuclear Base Clyde, where Trident submarines hosting the UK’s nuclear weapons programme are stationed. The Daily Mail report suggests as well that a quarantining facility is to be built on the Faslane site. As independent nuclear policy consultant David Lowry has commented:
“This raises the question of how well protected are our critical national nuclear installations – including nuclear submarine bases, nuclear weapons manufacturing plants such as AWE Aldermaston and Burghfield near Reading in Berkshire and civil nuclear power plants and associate nuclear fuel chain facilities such as Sellafield in Cumbria and Capenhurst in
Cheshire – from being overwhelmed by a rapid spread of a virus without any known antidote vaccine?”
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