The problem developed because the navy failed to maintain a network of 1,500 water pipes, the Scottish government said.
September 2025
By Shizuka Kuramitsu
After six years of secrecy, the Scottish government confirmed that the Royal Navy released radioactive water into Loch Long near Glasgow, due to its repeated failure to maintain a network of 1,500 water pipes at the Coulport armaments depot, the home base for the United Kingdom’s nuclear warheads.
According to the report co-published Aug. 9 by The Ferret and The Guardian, The Ferret obtained internal documents from the Scottish Government’s environmental watchdog, Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA), in August, which “disclose that radioactive water drained into the loch, which is popular with swimmers, divers, kayakers and fishers, after a major flood in 2019.”
Thiry-three documents published by SEPA Aug. 5 disclosed for the first time the problems that the Royal Navy had been having with pipes bursting and flooding parts of the “Trident Special Area” at Coulport, “one of the most secretive, sensitive and secure areas in the UK.” The files indicate that one pipe burst at Coulport in 2010, two burst in 2019, and two more burst in 2021.
The UK navy base Clyde at Faslane and the armaments depot at Coulport serve as the Royal Navy’s main presence in Scotland, where it is responsible for storing, processing, and maintaining key elements of the UK nuclear warheads for Trident submarines, a weapons processing facility, and missile bunkers. In 2019, 2023, and 2024, The Ferret “first made a freedom of information request for files on radioactive problems at Coulport and Faslane.”
The two newspapers reported that SEPA and the UK Defense Ministry sought to keep the documents secret for national security reasons, despite repeated inquiries by reporters since 2019. The government finally released the files on the orders of David Hamilton, the Scottish information commissioner, who polices Scotland’s freedom of information laws.
Speaking to The Guardian Aug. 9, the Scottish Green Party’s co-leader, Patrick Harvie, said that there “are few sites as dangerous and where an accident or shoddy maintenance could have such potentially catastrophic consequences.” He called for more transparency from the defense ministry.
The Ferret indicated Aug. 9 that the UK Defense Ministry “has clamped down on releasing information about the UK nuclear weapons programme, citing national security,” including censoring annual nuclear safety assessments reported in 2017. The Guardian reported in 2009 that “there had been leaks of radioactive coolant into the neighboring area, the Firth of Clyde from nuclear submarines in 2004, 2007, and 2008.”
According to the Aug. 9 report by The Ferret, both SEPA and the UK Defense Ministry claimed that there “have been no unsafe releases of radioactive material into the environment at any stage,” and that “the risk to the environment from effluent discharges is of no regulatory concern,” based on SEPA’s annual assessments.
The cleanup will not proceed until active operations at the site cease, the U.S. Department of Energy said.
September 2025
By Lipi Shetty
The U.S. Department of Energy will not clean up a nearly 12-acre radioactive waste site at Los Alamos National Laboratory, or LANL, until active operations at the site cease, the department told a state environmental agency June 18.
The New Mexico Environmental Department said in response that it “will utilize to the fullest extent all statutory and legal authority necessary to … ensure that New Mexicans receive effective cleanup of legacy contamination at LANL in a timely manner.”
The June 18 letter referred to Material Disposal Area C waste site at LANL, which contains radioactive and chemically contaminated waste in six disposal pits, a chemical pit, and 108 shafts. The site, one of several similar locations in the LANL area, was active from 1948 to 1974.
According to the letter, Material Disposal Area C “is associated with active Facility operations and will be deferred from further corrective action [until it] is no longer associated with active Facility operations.” LANL’s plutonium pit production facility, known as PF-4, is located near the site.
In September 2023, New Mexican authorities proposed that the U.S. Department of Energy excavate and remove hazardous waste at the site at a cost of roughly $800 million, as estimated by the Energy Department. The department had preferred a cleanup plan that involved paving over the site’s current interim soil cover with a layer resistant to erosion, wildlife, and vegetation, which it said would cost
$12 million.
Los Alamos is one of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s two proposed sites for restarting plutonium pit production. To meet congressional requirements to produce 80 pits per year, NNSA intends for LANL to produce 30 pits per year and for the under-construction Savannah River Plutonium Production Facility to produce an additional 50 pits per year.
By Daryl G. Kimball in Arms Control Today
By Xiaodon Liang in Arms Control Today
By Xiaodon Liang in Arms Control Today
By Kelsey Davenport in Arms Control Today
It is not enough, however, that Putin and Trump seem to understand the importance of maintaining common sense limits on their nuclear arsenals. They need to translate their words into pragmatic action, and soon, and not wait until there is a resolution to the war on Ukraine.
September 2025
By Daryl G. Kimball
Even before the start of his second term, U.S. President Donald Trump talked about how he could bring an end Russia’s brutal war on Ukraine. The issue dominated the hastily organized, poorly executed summit between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska in August. So far, Trump’s improvisational, personalized diplomacy has failed to bring about a ceasefire and done little to bridge the gulf between Ukraine and Russia on terms for a durable and just peace.
At the same time, Trump has said repeatedly that he wants talks with Putin on the denuclearization of the massive Russian and U.S. nuclear arsenals. Putin has expressed interest in talks on nuclear arms control without insisting, as he did beginning in 2023, on a complete halt to U.S. military aid to Ukraine as a precondition.
Trump told reporters Aug. 25 that nuclear weapons were on the agenda in Alaska. “We would like to denuclearize. It’s too much power, and we talked about that.... but we have to get the war over with,” he said. For his part, Putin said the discussions were aimed at creating the “long-term conditions of peace between our countries,” including “agreements in the field of strategic offensive arms control.”
It is not enough, however, that Putin and Trump seem to understand the importance of maintaining common sense limits on their nuclear arsenals. They need to translate their words into pragmatic action, and soon, and not wait until there is a resolution to the war on Ukraine.
In less than six months, on Feb. 5, 2026, the last remaining treaty limiting the two largest nuclear arsenals—the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START)—will expire. The treaty limits each side to no more than 1,550 deployed warheads on no more than 700 long-range missiles and bombers and has provided greater predictability in the dangerous Russian-U.S. deterrence relationship.
As Trump said July 25 in response to a question about expiration of the treaty, “We are starting to work on that. That is a big problem for the world, when you take off nuclear restrictions.”
Unless the two leaders reach an interim deal to maintain existing limits, each side could quickly increase the size of its deployed nuclear arsenal for the first time in more than 35 years by uploading additional warheads on existing long-range missiles.
More nuclear weapons will not make anyone safer. The United States already has a devastating, survivable nuclear force that is more than sufficient to deter nuclear attack by China, Russia and any other nuclear-armed states. Any Russian and U.S. buildup would further destabilize the mutual balance of nuclear terror; strain the already costly, behind-schedule U.S. nuclear modernization program; and prompt China to accelerate its ongoing nuclear buildup.
Negotiating nuclear arms control with Russia is never easy. Near the end of his first term, in 2020, Trump failed to make headway with Russia on a new nuclear arms control agreement, in part because his national security team convinced him to try to include China in a three-way negotiation. China, which has a smaller arsenal, is concerned about its vulnerability to a first strike and values opacity, rebuffed the proposal. Russia responded by insisting that France and the United Kingdom also be involved.
This time, Trump’s team will need to craft a more practical and effective approach. First—because negotiating a comprehensive post-New START framework deal with Russia would require sustained talks over months, if not years—Putin and Trump should seek a simple, informal deal to maintain the existing caps after the treaty expires, as long as the other side does so. They could resume data exchanges and inspections, or simply monitor compliance through national technical means of intelligence. Unlike ending the war on Ukraine, such a deal could be secured in one meeting.
By agreeing not to exceed the current strategic nuclear limits, they could reduce tensions, forestall a costly arms race that no one can win, create diplomatic leverage to curb the buildup of China’s arsenal, and buy time for talks on a broader, more durable, treaty.
Second, Putin and Trump should immediately direct their teams to begin negotiations on a new more comprehensive agreement or agreements that address difficult issues with which the two sides have long struggled. These include: deeper verifiable strategic nuclear reductions; restrictions on intermediate-range forces and sub-strategic nuclear weapons; and limits on strategic missile defense, space-based weapons, and long-range conventional strike weapons.
To broaden the disarmament effort, Putin and Trump could call on China, France, and the UK to report on their total nuclear weapons holdings and freeze their nuclear stockpiles provided Russia and the United States pursue deeper verifiable reductions in their far larger arsenals.
If Putin and Trump maintain current strategic nuclear limits after New START expires, separate nuclear arms control from the complex challenge of ending Putin’s war on Ukraine, and launch talks on more ambitious nuclear disarmament measures, they can reduce the most immediate existential security threat facing the world.
If the E3 and the United States fail to prioritize pragmatic diplomacy in the coming weeks and provide assurance that there will be no further military attacks while bilateral talks proceed, they risk pushing Tehran closer to nuclear weapons and putting the region back on a path to war.
E3, US Needs A More Effective Diplomatic Strategy for Iran Post-Snapback
Statement from Kelsey Davenport, Director for Nonproliferation Policy.
Today’s decision by the E3 (France, Germany, and the United Kingdom) to initiate the process to snap back UN sanctions on Iran that were modified as part of the 2015 nuclear deal must be paired with an effective diplomatic strategy that restarts talks between the United States and Iran. If the E3 and the United States fail to prioritize pragmatic diplomacy in the coming weeks and provide assurance that there will be no further military attacks while bilateral talks proceed, they risk pushing Tehran closer to nuclear weapons and putting the region back on a path to war.
Under the so-called snapback process outlined in Resolution 2231, which endorsed the 2015 nuclear deal, the Security Council now has 30 days to pass a resolution continuing the UN sanctions relief. If such a resolution does not pass, there will be an automatic reimposition of the UN sanctions and nuclear restrictions—including a prohibition on uranium enrichment—contained in resolutions passed by the Security Council between 2006 and 2010 as part of the global pressure campaign that contributed to the negotiation of the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Iran has threatened to respond to the snapping back of UN measures, including by withdrawing from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT)—a step that would put the United States and Iran back on a path to conflict.
To avert this crisis, the Trump administration must take advantage of the 30-day window before snapback is finalized to reach an interim agreement with Iran that stabilizes the current crisis and extends the option to snapback UN sanctions. Such an arrangement would reduce the risk of further conflict and create the time and space for the complex negotiations that will be necessary to negotiate a comprehensive nuclear deal.
In any interim agreement, the Trump administration must prioritize the return of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors to Iran. IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi’s announcement that inspectors returned to Iran and Tehran’s decision to allow inspectors access to the Bushehr site is a positive step, but it is imperative that Iran meets its legal obligations by allowing the full resumption of IAEA safeguards inspections at all sites and cooperating with IAEA efforts to account for Iran’s stockpiles of nuclear materials, particularly the uranium enriched to 60 percent.
An interim deal should also take into account Iran’s legitimate concerns about further illegal attacks on its nuclear facilities and scientists by solidifying the ceasefire that ended the 12-day war between Israel, Iran, and the United States and recognizing Iran’s NPT right to a peaceful nuclear program under IAEA safeguards.
An agreement along these lines would be insufficient to resolve the Iranian nuclear crisis, but it would be a positive step that de-escalates tensions and creates time for further diplomacy to reduce Iran’s proliferation risk in the long term.
Failure to use the 30-day window to reach an agreement that staves off snapback risks putting the United States, Israel, and Iran back on the path to conflict and could drive Tehran to follow through on its threat to withdraw from the NPT, a step that increases the risk of a nuclear-armed Iran and weakens the treaty.
Despite President Donald Trump’s claims that the U.S. and Israeli military strikes set Iran’s program back by years, military action is incapable of addressing Iran’s proliferation threat. Iran’s nuclear knowledge cannot be bombed away, and Tehran still possesses nuclear capabilities and material that pose an urgent proliferation threat. And now some of those materials, including Iran’s stockpile of uranium enriched to near-weapons grade levels, remain accounted for and unmonitored. It is highly likely that Iran retains the capabilities and materials to quickly return to the threshold of nuclear weapons or weaponize if the decision were made to do so.
If Trump fails to seize this moment, he risks dragging the United States back into a military conflict with Iran, weakening the NPT, and driving Tehran closer to the bomb. It is in neither the interest of Tehran nor Washington to miss this window of opportunity to pursue a lasting diplomatic solution that verifiably blocks Iran's pathways to nuclear weapons and provides Iran with benefits in return.
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The Arms Control Association is an independent, nongovernmental, nonpartisan membership organization dedicated to the providing authoritative information and practical solutions to eliminate the threats posed by the world's most dangerous weapons.
Kelsey Davenport is the Director for Nonproliferation Policy, and is a leading expert on nuclear and missile programs in Iran and North Korea and on international efforts to prevent proliferation and nuclear terrorism.
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