The Independent: A major nuclear incident was narrowly averted at the heart of Britain's Royal Navy submarine fleet,The Independent on Sunday can reveal. The failure of both the primary and secondary power sources of coolant for nuclear reactors at the Devonport dockyard in Plymouth on 29 July last year followed warnings in previous years of just such a situation.
Experts yesterday compared the crisis at the naval base, operated by the Ministry of Defence and government engineering contractors Babcock Marine, with the Fukushima Daiichi power-station meltdown in Japan in 2011.
It came just four months after the Defence Secretary, Philip Hammond, announced that the base would "remain vital in the future".
The failure of the electric-power source for coolant to nuclear reactors and then the diesel back-up generators was revealed in a heavily redacted report from the Ministry of Defence's Site Event Report Committee (Serc).
Once a submarine arrives at the Devon base's specially designed Tidal X-Berths, it must be connected to coolant supplies to prevent its nuclear reactor overheating.
But last July a series of what were described as "unidentified defects" triggered the failures which meant that for more than 90 minutes, submarines were left without their main sources of coolant.
