New questions are being raised about the UK’s £41bn programme to replace its Trident nuclear deterrent after the cost of building the reactors that will power the submarine fleet soared. An extra £235m of taxpayers’ money is needed for the £1.465bn scheme to make and maintain the reactor cores for the navy’s existing nuclear submarines and the four Dreadnought-class ballistic missile submarines, the first of which is expected to enter service in 2028. Last week a government watchdog gave the project a damning “red” warning. The rating – the severest possible – by officials at the Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA), which reports to the Cabinet Office and Treasury, means a successful delivery of the project “appe ars to be unachievable” under the original budget and that “there are major issues on project definition, schedule, budget, quality and/or benefits delivery, which at this stage do not appear to be manageable or resolvable.”
Times 23rd July 2017 read more »
THE UK Government’s £43 billion plans to replace the Trident nuclear weapons system and build a new fleet of nuclear-powered submarines for the Clyde are “in doubt” or “unachievable”, according to a high-powered Westminster spending watchdog. A new report from the Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA) to the Cabinet Office and the Treasury in London has condemned three major nuclear projects run by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) for being poorly managed, over-budget and beset bytechnical problems.
Herald 23rd July 2017 read more »
Bite the bullet and call a halt to Trident. YOU can always tell when a big public scheme turns seriously sour. Managers reorganise and the product is rebranded, as if changing the process and the name will solve the fundamental problems. Famously in the nuclear sphere, the reputation of the Windscale reprocessing plant in Cumbria became so bad we all had to learn to call it Sellafield. Now it seems the Ministry of Defence (MoD) is trying to pull the same trick with Trident. The programme to replace Trident nuclear submarines has been so dogged with technical problems and costs overruns, they have decided to rename it. From now on, we should call it Dreadnought – also the name of the UK’s first nuclear submarine now languishing at Rosyth dockyard.
Herald 23rd July 2017 read more »