Freedom Of Information Request on Trident sent to MOD

Freedom of Information Request: 

Your department recently announced a £1billion contract to Rolls Royce for advanced work for the Trident replacement submarine nuclear reactors. Should the decision be made to proceed with Trident, this will be just one small part of a much bigger investment programme. An expenditure of this size in the current economic circumstances indicates your department’s expectation that the decision to proceed with Trident will be made in the next parliament. 

I and many others are extremely concerned about the implications this has on our ability to agree international climate change agreements, which is our biggest security threat. To build the replacement Trident missile system requires a huge military industrial complex and large economy to raise the taxes. The maintenance of this infrastructure and economy is wholly incompatible with the need to move towards a sustainable society to combat climate change and peak oil. What is more, it forces our competing nations to make similar decisions. The resultant industrial competition is the exact opposite of the co-operation needed to save our planet’s destruction from climate change. 

We would also point to the recent releases of methane hydrates in the high arctic. This worrying development shows climate change is rapidly developing its own momentum which will very soon be totally out of our ability to control, and therefore all measures to reduce CO2 emissions must be considered. 

The UK Low Carbon Transition Plan states, “To stay on track [with carbon reductions], the Government is moving to a radical new approach. Every major decision now needs to take account of the impact on the carbon budget.” As you will appreciate, no decision is more important than Trident. 

It was therefore highly disappointing to find in correspondence with DECC that they do not have a carbon budget for Trident nor are they prepared to calculate one.  Therefore, as a matter of major public interest we will take it upon ourselves to calculate and publicise the carbon budget.  

To assist our work in this area, we request under the Freedom of Information Act the following information:

• Copies of the latest bills of materials for Trident 

• Manufacturing specifications for key components

• List of all key manufacturing sites,