The Ministry of Defence has released the number of Nuclear Site Event Reports (NSERs) at Coulport and Faslane, for the period between January 2022 and March 2023.
The reports, requested by Deidre Brock MP, reveal that the safety significance of all events remains low, with no reported incidents causing harm to staff, the public, or the environment.
Alex Chalk, then Minister of State at the Ministry of Defence, stated, “The NSERs are raised to maintain a strong safety culture that learns from experiences, such as equipment failures, human errors, procedural failings, documentation shortcomings, or near-misses”. The reported events are all below Level 1, the lowest of the seven-point Internal Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES).
The majority of events at both bases were classified as Category D or below, indicating minimal safety risks. There were no Category A events during the reported period. The following table shows the total number of events at Faslane and Coulport from January 2022 to March 2023:
| Year | Category B | Category C | Category D | Below Scale | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 2 | 27 | 88 | 87 | 204 |
| 2023 (Jan-March) | 1 | 8 | 32 | 17 | 58 |
In addition to the recent data, the Ministry of Defence previously provided a summary of NSERs from 2019 to 2021. The main points from this summary are presented in the table below:
| Year | Category B | Category C | Category D | Below Scale | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 1 | 6 | 50 | 101 | 158 |
| 2020 | 0 | 1 | 26 | 122 | 149 |
| 2021 | 3 | 10 | 41 | 99 | 153 |
Chalk emphasised that “the safety of the naval bases remains a priority and that no incidents have caused harm or had any radiological impact on the environment”.
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