Hundreds of fires on submarines

Friday, April 03, 2009

Britain's nuclear powered submarine fleet has been involved in 14 major collisions and 237 fires over the last 22 years according to the MoD.

New statistics provided by armed forces minister Bob Ainsworth show that since 198 there have been 14 collisions involving nuclear powered submarines, although only one, HMS Vanguard, involved a collision with another submarine. Another nuclear armed submarine, HMS Victorious, ran aground in November 2000.

Since 1987 there have also been a number of fires on nuclear submarines, raising concerns over the potential threat to the nuclear reactors and weapons systems.

According to the MoD there have been 213 "minor" fires onboard nuclear submarines. In these incidences the fires were "localised" and quickly put out.

There have also been 21 medium scale fires. In these cases the fires were usually localised according to Ainsworth, but they required significant resources to put out the flames.

All of these fires occurred while the ships were at sea.

In three other incidents, fires occurred onboard submarines while they were docked.

SNP defence spokesperson Angus Robertson was displeased by the revelation, sayingL "Last month's mid-Atlantic collision between HMS Vanguard and Le Triomphant was serious enough, but this diary of near disasters is extremely disturbing.

"One collision is one too many - especially when it involves a submarine carrying weapons of mass destruction. The possible consequences do not bear thinking about.

"Revelations that there have been more than 200 fires aboard nuclear submarines over the past twenty years are equally grave."