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A Sunday newspaper
is making claims about the safety of Devonport Dockyard's facilities
to re-fuel and re-fit Trident submarines.
The Sunday Express's front page story alleges there are serious
flaws to one of DML's reactor houses, which effectively allows engineers
to work on the subs.
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The
DML building
at Devonport in Plymouth
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Reports in the
paper say the Dock Reactor Access House is unsafe to work in. It
says officials from the Health and Safety Executive's Nuclear Installations
Inspectorate, which carries out checks on all UK nuclear sites,
found dangerous flaws in the equipment and demanded changes.
An independent expert is quoted in the Sunday Express as saying
"any re-fueling work which takes place at Devonport, should
be out of the question."
A DML spokesman is playing down the safety fears.
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Peter
Whitehouse is the Corporate Development Director at DML. He
says there's no question over safety at the dockyard.
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 Click
here to listen to his response to today's article
in the Sunday Express |
The corporate
development director, Peter Whitehouse says the company is making
modifications, following inspections, made by the health and Safety
Executive.
"All of our facilities are subject to very rigorous scrutiny
by the regulatory authority", he said, "and from DML's
point of view these sorts of issues are not unexpected in a project
of this scale".
When asked about
the safety of workers and nearby residents, Mr Whitehouse agreed
that modifications were being made to the equipment but said there
was no possibility of the equipment being used until it was 100%
safe. "There is no question over safety" he added.
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