£12m-a-year bill to store Navy’s old nuclear subs

A FLEET of obsolete Royal Navy submarines is costing taxpayers £12million a year because of the Ministry of Defence’s failure to dispose of them, officials warned yesterday.

The MoD has twice as many submarines in storage as it does in service and has not disposed of any of the 20 boats decommissioned since 1980, the National Audit Office said. Nine of the old nuclear-powered vessels contain irradiated fuel.

The boats are stored at Devonport and Rosyth while arrangements are made to break them up and dispose of the radioactive waste they contain. The estimated cost of disposing of a submarine is £96million, the NAO said.

But none have had their fuel removed since 2004, when regulators said the facilities for doing so did not meet required standards, with the process not due to start again until 2023.

MP Meg Hillier, chairman of the Commons public accounts committee, attacked the Ministry of Defence’s ‘dismal lack of progress’ on disposing of the boats. She added: ‘The ministry needs to get a grip before we run out of space to store and maintain submarines and we damage our reputation as a responsible nuclear power.’