About Aldermaston

The Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) at Aldermaston designs and manufactures the warheads for the United Kingdom's nuclear weapons. It is now run by AWE plc which is owned by BNFL, Lockheed Martin UK and Serco through AWE Management Ltd.

The first Aldermaston March was at Easter 1958 shortly after the formation of CND.

New Developments

In 2002, the private consortium which manages AWE Aldermaston published a plan to redevelop and build new facilities at the site. These developments are on the scale of Heathrow's Terminal five and are estimated to cost in excess of £5bn and will result in the employment of over one thousand additional staff. Campaigners are concerned that many of the new facilities are being built to facilitate a new generation of nuclear weapons. These developments at Aldermaston tie in with the March 2007 parliamentary decision to develop a new generation of nuclear-armed submarines: Aldermaston will build the warheads for this new system.

Computer Facilities

The heart of the new development at Aldermaston is the new computer facilities. In 2002 the Blue Oak computer was installed and in 2006 an order was placed for a new £20 million computer called Larch. These facilities will give AWE one of the most powerful computer systems in Europe - possibly only exceeded by the supercomputers used in the USA for their atomic weapons development.

Using these facilities it is intended that new nuclear warheads would be developed without the need for testing (which is not allowed under the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty). In June 2002, the Observer and Guardian reported on plans for new developments at AWE. A spokesperson for AWE told the Guardian that the new facilities would provide Aldermaston with the capacity to design and produce mini-nukes.

Computer simulations will be augmented by experimental data provided by other new facilities being built at Aldermaston.

Orion Laser

The old laser facility at the site is being replaced by a new facility which is 1000 times more powerful. This is likely to be used to get a better understanding of the physics behind nuclear explosions and therefore aid the computer simulations that will be used in the design of new warheads. It is believed that they will work closely with the National Ignition Facility in the USA which has similar capabilities.

Hydrodynamic Testing - Core Punch Facility

This proposed facility would allow some of the extreme conditions found inside a nuclear explosion to be recreated on the laboratory scale. The results from these tests can then be used to improve the computer simulations of the nuclear weapons

Material Sciences

New facilities are also planned to research into new materials and to gain a better understanding of how materials behave inside a nuclear warhead.

New Production Facilities

The plans also include refurbishing the facilities to build the warheads. These include new facilities for handling plutonium, highly enriched uranium, tritium, high explosives and new warhead assembly facilities.

Facilities Outside Aldermaston

AWE also works closely with universities and other laboratories in basic research that is used for the development of new nuclear weapons. The state-of-the-art facilities at the site are used to lure researchers into working on 'dual use' technologies. For example new technologies which can be used for the enrichment of uranium but may also have other industrial uses.