Military convoys carrying nuclear weapons through Britain’s cities and towns have experienced 180 mishaps and incidents, including collisions, breakdowns and brake failures during the last 16 years, according to a report produced by a disarmament campaign.

The incidents catalogued in the report – based on official logs released under the Freedom of Information Act – include fuel leaks, overheated engines, clutch problems, and other mechanical faults in the convoys.

At other times, according to the report, the convoys went the wrong way, were diverted, and lost communications with commanders. The rate at which the incidents have occurred has risen in recent years, with 43 in the last three years.

In its report published on Wednesday, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (Ican) warns that a serious accident involving the convoys could spread radioactivity over cities, contaminating communities and increasing cancer risks.

The convoys pass through cities and towns between Scotland and southern England. However, an opinion poll commissioned by Ican shows that nearly two-thirds of British adults did not know that the military transports nuclear warheads on British roads, prompting the campaigners to argue that members of the public have not given their consent to the dangers they pose.

Materials for nuclear weapons are driven through or flown over 122 local councils in the UK, including densely-populated areas such as Bristol, Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Sheffield, Manchester and Newcastle, according to Ministry of Defence data.

A Ministry of Defence spokesperson said: “The transport of defence nuclear material is carried out to the highest standard in accordance with stringent safety regulations, and all operational and engineering incidents are reported, however minor.”

“In over 50 years of transporting defence nuclear material in the UK, there has never been an incident that has posed any radiation hazard to the public or to the environment.”

Nuclear weapons: an accident waiting to happen Read more

The Ican report describes how nuclear warheads are carried in dark green, 44-tonne trucks between a bomb factory at Burghfield near Reading in Berkshire and a naval depot at Coulport on Loch Long near Glasgow, where they are loaded onto submarines.



The 900-mile round trips, usually spread over one or two days, are completed between two and six times a year, with the most recent one reported to have been completed this week.

According to Ican, the convoys – comprising up to 20 vehicles including police cars and a fire engine – use a variety of routes. One from Burghfield, where the warheads are assembled and maintained, goes along the M40, round Birmingham and past Preston on the M6, and then the M74 to Glasgow.

Another takes the convoy round London on the M25 and then north on the M1 via Leeds and Newcastle and then the A1 or A68 to Edinburgh and the M9 to Stirling.

In January last year, the convoy travelled through the centre of Glasgow during a fierce storm, according to the report.

The short descriptions of the incidents released by the MoD in response to freedom of information requests do not disclose where most of them happened.

Two occurred in May 2013. After a rest break at a military base, one of the vehicles in the convoy came into undefined contact with a parked civilian vehicle, and on another occasion, two convoy vehicles were involved in what the MoD said was a “minor road traffic collision” that left “marks to bumper on one vehicle”. There was another collision with a parked car at an MoD base in January 2014.

The campaigners said that one of the most dangerous mechanical failures happened in July 2011 when one of the vehicles broke down on the M6 in Cheshire. The vehicle suffered “a sudden and dramatic loss of power and was forced to pull onto the hard shoulder of the motorway” along with the rest of the convoy, according to the MoD’s report of the incident. It closed two lanes of the motorway and resulted in 10-mile tailbacks.

The incident was caused by a manufacturing fault, which had to be rectified across the whole fleet, according to the report.

Other incidents include delays caused by poor weather such as snow, computer software glitches and traffic jams.



MoD catalogues its nuclear blunders Read more

The convoys are necessary because Britain’s nuclear weapons need to be returned to Burghfield periodically so they can be refurbished or dismantled.

Listed among the incidents are delays caused by protests by anti-nuclear campaigners, one of whom glued themselves to the roof of one of the vehicles. The convoys are often tracked on social media.

Matt Hawkins, spokesman for Ican, said the report “painted a grim picture of the great risks posed by nuclear convoys”, adding that nuclear weapons “only add danger to our lives, exposing us all to the risk of radiation leaks or an attack by terrorists on one of these convoys”.



In 2003, following pressure from the Guardian, the MoD was forced to publish a list of accidents involving nuclear weapons between 1960 and 1991 after decades of secrecy. It showed that the weapons had been dropped, struck by other weapons and carried on a truck that slid down a hill and toppled over.

