Trident - Britain's weapon of mass destruction
Back to index
Trident-related bases	Trident: built by VSEL

Development and maintenance of a nuclear weapon system like Trident requires massive infrastructure. There are Trident-related bases all over Britain and in addition the UK Trident uses facilities in the United States. These are just some of the British bases involved:

Aldermaston

The Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) at Aldermaston, near Reading is at the centre of British nuclear weapons design and production. It is responsible for design, production, maintenance and the decommissioning of Britain's nuclear warheads. Aldermaston cooperates extensively with nuclear weapons laboratories in the United States on research and development, and maintaining the UK's current Trident warheads.
Aldermaston is owned by the Ministry of Defence (MoD), but since the early 1990s AWE has a GOCO status - Government Owned-Contractor Operated. Thus, although the Ministry owns the site, private companies run the day to day operations. Since April 2000, AWE has been run by British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL), Lockheed Martin and Serco.

Burghfield

Atomic Weapons Establishment Burghfield, 7 miles from Aldermaston, is responsible for assembling the UK's nuclear warheads. Nuclear components are transported from Aldermaston to Burghfield, where they are assembled and then transported by road to Coulport for deployment on Trident submarines.

Faslane

The UK's Trident submarines are based at the Clyde Submarine Base in Faslane near Glasgow. In the 1980s and 1990s, major construction work was carried out at the base to build facilities to accommodate Trident. Faslane also hosts visits from US Trident submarines.

Faslane also hosts a number of nuclear-powered attack submarines, known as "hunter killers". These submarines carry conventional weapons, and are used to escort Trident submarine on their patrols.

Coulport

Trident warheads are stored at the Royal Naval Arms Depot Coulport, adjacent to Faslane. There are normally 144 nuclear warheads on submarines and a further 30-50 at Coulport, where basic maintenance work and inspections are carried out on them. From time to time small numbers of warheads are removed from each submarines and replaced. Rocket fuel, high explosives and plutonium are kept in close proximity here.

Devonport

Devonport Royal Dockyard in Plymouth has the contract for refitting Trident submarines. The first Trident submarine, HMS Vanguard went into refit there in August 2002. The other Trident submarines will be refitted in the next 8-10 years. For more information on Trident refitting, see Trident Refit and Refuelling.

Devonport is likely to be an above ground storage site for sections of decommissioned submarines - where nuclear fuel (from reactor core) is extracted as part of a refit or decommission. The cores are then transported to BNFL Sellafield where they are stored in a cooling pond until a safe means of disposal is found.

Rolls Royce

Nuclear reactors that power the Trident submarines are built by Rolls Royce in Derby. The nuclear fuel that powers Trident nuclear reactors and fuel rods that are put into the modules of the reactors is also manufactured there.

Vickers Shipbuilding & Engineering Ltd (VSEL)

The Trident submarines were built by Vickers Shipbuilding & Engineering Ltd in Barrow in Furness, Cumbria, which also builds nuclear-powered attack submarines, based at Faslane and Devonport.

Chapelcross

The Chapelcross nuclear reactor in the South West of Scotland produces tritium, an essential ingredient to enhance the performance of nuclear warheads by increasing its explosive power. As tritium has a relatively short radioactive half-life, the Tritium in warheads must be replaced regularly. Chapelcross is due to be decommissioned within the next 2 years.

Sellafield

Sellafield is a major nuclear facility on the west coast of Cumbria, it is owned by the government and run by BNFL. Historically, the key material for nuclear weapons, plutonium, was produced by reprocessing spent fuel from the UK’s older Magnox nuclear reactors. Sellafield now reprocesses nuclear materials for a range of international customers including a number of Western European countries and Japan. Reprocessing nuclear materials increases the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation by increasing the amount of plutonium available.



Back to Top

Privacy Statement | Sitemap